The Scholars

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,Old, learned, respectable bald headsEdit and annotate the linesThat young men, tossing on their beds,Rhymed out in love's despairTo flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

They'll cough in the ink to the world's end;Wear out the carpet with their shoesEarning respect; have no strange friend;If they have sinned nobody knows.Lord, what would they sayShould their Catullus walk that way?

'Though logic choppers rule the town,And every man and maid and boyHas marked a distant object down,An aimless joy is a pure joy,'Or so did Tom O'Roughley sayThat saw the surges running by,'And wisdom is a butterflyAnd not a gloomy bird of prey.

'If little planned is little sinnedBut little need the grave distress.What's dying but a second wind?How but in zigzag wantonnessCould trumpeter Michael be so brave?'Or something of that sort he said,'And if my dearest friend were deadI'd dance a measure on his grave.'

Nor bird nor beastCould 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 metWhere my goats browse on the scarce grass or leapFrom stone to stone.

I am looking for strayed sheep;Something has troubled me and in my troubleI let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone,For rhyme can beat a measure out of troubleAnd make the daylight sweet once more; but whenI had driven every rhyme into its placeThe sheep had gone from theirs.

He that was best in every country sportAnd every country craft, and of us allMost courteous to slow age and hasty youthIs dead.

He had often played his pipes among my hillsAnd when he played it was their loneliness,The exultation of their stone, that criedUnder his fingers.

How does she bear her grief? There is not a shepherdBut grows more gentle when he speaks her name,Remembering kindness done, and how can I,That found when I had neither goat nor grazingNew welcome and old wisdom at her fireTill winter blasts were gone, but speak of herEven before his children and his wife.

She goes about her house erect and calmBetween the pantry and the linen chest,Or else at meadow or at grazing overlooksHer labouring men, as though her darling livedBut for her grandson now; there is no changeBut such as I have seen upon her faceWatching our shepherd sports at harvest-timeWhen her son's turn was over.

Sing your song,I too have rhymed my reveries, but youthIs hot to show whatever it has foundAnd till that's done can neither work nor wait.Old goatherds and old goats, if in all elseYouth can excel them in accomplishment,Are learned in waiting.

You cannot but have seenThat he alone had gathered up no gear,Set carpenters to work on no wide table,On no long bench nor lofty milking shedAs others will, when first they take possession,But left the house as in his father's timeAs though he knew himself, as it were, a cuckoo,No settled man. And now that he is goneThere's nothing of him left but half a scoreOf sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes.

I worked all dayAnd when 'twas done so little had I doneThat maybe 'I am sorry' in plain proseHad sounded better to your mountain fancy.

'Like the speckled bird that steersThousands of leagues oversea,And runs for a while or a while half-fliesUpon his yellow legs through our meadows,He stayed for a while; and weHad scarcely accustomed our earsTo his speech at the break of day,Had scarcely accustomed our eyesTo his shape in the lengthening shadows,Where the sheep are thrown in the pool,When he vanished from ears and eyes.I had wished a dear thing on that dayI heard him first, but man is a fool.'

You sing as always of the natural life,And I that made like music in my youthHearing it now have sighed for that young manAnd certain lost companions of my own.

They say that on your barren mountain ridgeYou have measured out the road that the soul treadsWhen it has vanished from our natural eyes;That you have talked with apparitions.

They have brought me from that ridgeSeed pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy.

'He grows younger every secondThat were all his birthdays reckonedMuch too solemn seemed;Because of what he had dreamed,Or the ambitions that he served,Much too solemn and reserved.Jaunting, journeyingTo his own dayspring,He unpacks the loaded pernOf all 'twas pain or joy to learn,Of all that he had made.The outrageous war shall fade;At some old winding whitethorn rootHe'll practice on the shepherd's flute,Or on the close-cropped grassCourt his shepherd lass,Or run where lads reform our day-timeTill that is their long shouting play-time;Knowledge he shall unwindThrough victories of the mind,Till, clambering at the cradle side,He dreams himself his mother's pride,All knowledge lost in tranceOf sweeter ignorance.'

When I have shut these ewes and this old ramInto the fold, we'll to the woods and thereCut out our rhymes on strips of new-torn barkBut put no name and leave them at her door.To know the mountain and the valley grieveMay be a quiet thought to wife and mother,And children when they spring up shoulder high.