THYRSIS deg.

A MONODY, TO COMMEMORATE THE AUTHOR’S FRIEND
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH, WHO DIED AT FLORENCE, 1861

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills deg.! deg.1
  In the two Hinkseys deg. nothing keeps the same; deg.2
    The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
  And from the sign is gone Sibylla’s name, deg. deg.4
    And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks—­ 5
      Are ye too changed, ye hills deg.? deg.6
  See, ’tis no foot of unfamiliar men
    To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays! 
    Here came I often, often, in old days—­
  Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then. 10

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,
  Past the high wood, to where the elm-tree crowns
    The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames
  The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs deg.? deg.14
    The Vale, deg. the three lone weirs, deg. the youthful Thames?—­, deg.15
      This winter-eve is warm,
  Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,
    The tender purple spray on copse and briers! 
    And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, deg. deg.19
  She needs not June for beauty’s heightening, deg. deg.20

Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!—­
  Only, methinks, some loss of habit’s power
    Befalls me wandering through this upland dim, deg. deg.23
  Once pass’d I blindfold here, at any hour deg.; deg.24
    Now seldom come I, since I came with him. 25
      That single elm-tree bright
  Against the west—­I miss it! is it gone? 
    We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said,
    Our friend, the Gipsy-Scholar, was not dead;
  While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on. deg. deg.30

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here,
  But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;
    And with the country-folk acquaintance made
  By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick. 
    Here, too, our shepherd-pipes deg. we first assay’d. deg.35
      Ah me! this many a year
  My pipe is lost, my shepherd’s holiday! 
    Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart
    Into the world and wave of men depart;
  But Thyrsis of his own will went away. deg. deg.40

It irk’d deg. him to be here, he could not rest. deg.41
  He loved each simple joy the country yields,
    He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep, deg. deg.43
  For that a shadow lour’d on the fields,
    Here with the shepherds and the silly deg. sheep. deg.45