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- SHEPHERD AND GOATHERD
-
- i{Shepherd.} That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year.
- I wished before it ceased.
- i{Goatherd.} Nor bird nor beast
- Could make me wish for anything this day,
- Being old, but that the old alone might die,
- And that would be against God's providence.
- Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?
- Never until this moment have we met
- Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap
- From stone to Stone.
- i{Shepherd.} I am looking for strayed sheep;
- Something has troubled me and in my rrouble
- I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone,
- For rhme can beat a measure out of trouble
- And make the daylight sweet once more; but when
- I had driven every rhyme into its Place
- The sheep had gone from theirs.
- i{Goatherd.} I know right well
- What turned so good a shepherd from his charge.
- i{Shepherd.} He that was best in every country sport
- And every country craft, and of us all
- Most courteous to slow age and hasty youth,
- Is dead.
- i{Goatherd.} The boy that brings my griddle-cake
- Brought the bare news.
- i{Shepherd.} He had thrown the crook away
- And died in the great war beyond the sea.
- i{Goatherd.} He had often played his pipes among my hills,
- And when he played it was their loneliness,
- The exultation of their stone, that died
- Under his fingers.
- i{Shepherd.} I had it from his mother,
- And his own flock was browsing at the door.
- i{Goatherd.} How does she bear her grief? There is not a
- shepherd
- But grows more gentle when he speaks her name,
- Remembering kindness done, and how can I,
- That found when I had neither goat nor grazing
- New welcome and old wisdom at her fire
- Till winter blasts were gone, but speak of her
- Even before his children and his wife?
- i{Shepherd.} She goes about her house erect and calm
- Between the pantry and the linen-chest,
- Or else at meadow or at grazing overlooks
- Her labouring men, as though her darling lived,
- But for her grandson now; there is no change
- But such as I have Seen upon her face
- Watching our shepherd sports at harvest-time
- When her son's turn was over.
- i{Goatherd.} Sing your song.
- I too have rhymed my reveries, but youth
- Is hot to show whatever it has found,
- And till that's done can neither work nor wait.
- Old goatherds and old goats, if in all else
- Youth can excel them in accomplishment,
- Are learned in waiting.
- i{Shepherd.} You cannot but have seen
- That he alone had gathered up no gear,
- Set carpenters to work on no wide table,
- On no long bench nor lofty milking-shed
- As others will, when first they take possession,
- But left the house as in his father's time
- As though he knew himself, as it were, a cuckoo,
- No settled man. And now that he is gone
- There's nothing of him left but half a score
- Of sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes.
- i{Goatherd.} You have put the thought in rhyme.
- i{Shepherd.} I worked all day,
- And when 'twas done so little had I done
- That maybe "I am sorry' in plain prose
- Had Sounded better to your mountain fancy.
- i{[He sings.]}
- "Like the speckled bird that steers
- Thousands of leagues oversea,
- And runs or a while half-flies
- On his yellow legs through our meadows.
- He stayed for a while; and we
- Had scarcely accustomed our ears
- To his speech at the break of day,
- Had scarcely accustomed our eyes
- To his shape at the rinsing-pool
- Among the evening shadows,
- When he vanished from ears and eyes.
- I might have wished on the day
- He came, but man is a fool.'
- i{Goatherd.} You sing as always of the natural life,
- And I that made like music in my youth
- Hearing it now have sighed for that young man
- And certain lost companions of my own.
- i{Shepherd.} They say that on your barren mountain ridge
- You have measured out the road that the soul treads
- When it has vanished from our natural eyes;
- That you have talked with apparitions.
- i{Goatherd.} Indeed
- My daily thoughts since the first stupor of youth
- Have found the path my goats' feet cannot find.
- i{Shepherd.} Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have
- plucked
- Some medicable herb to make our grief
- Less bitter.
- i{Goatherd.} They have brought me from that ridge
- Seed-pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy.
- i{[Sings.]}
- "He grows younger every second
- That were all his birthdays reckoned
- Much too solemn seemed;
- Because of what he had dreamed,
- Or the ambitions that he served,
- Much too solemn and reserved.
- Jaunting, journeying
- To his own dayspring,
- He unpacks the loaded pern
- Of all 'twas pain or joy to learn,
- Of all that he had made.
- The outrageous war shall fade;
- At some old winding whitethorn root
- He'll practise on the shepherd's flute,
- Or on the close-cropped grass
- Court his shepherd lass,
- Or put his heart into some game
- Till daytime, playtime seem the same;
- Knowledge he shall unwind
- Through victories of the mind,
- Till, clambering at the cradle-side,
- He dreams himself hsi mother's pride,
- All knowledge lost in trance
- Of sweeter ignorance.'
- i{Shepherd.} When I have shut these ewes and this old ram
- Into the fold, we'll to the woods and there
- Cut out our rhymes on strips of new-torn bark
- But put no name and leave them at her door.
- To know the mountain and the valley have grieved
- May be a quiet thought to wife and mother,
- And children when they spring up shoulder-high.
-