How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
 In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
 The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
 And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
 And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks--
 Are ye too changed, ye hills?
 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.

 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,
 The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames?--
 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,
 She needs not June for beauty's heightening,

 Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!--
 Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power
 Befalls me wandering through this upland dim.
 Once pass'd I blindfold here, at any hour;
 Now seldom come I, since I came with him.
 That single elm-tree bright
 Against the west--I miss it! is it goner?
 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.

 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 we first assay'd.
 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.

 It irk'd him to be here, he could not rest.
 He loved each simple joy the country yields,
 He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep,
 For that a shadow lour'd on the fields,
 Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep.
 Some life of men unblest
 He knew, which made him droop, and fill'd his head.
 He went; his piping took a troubled sound
 Of storms that rage outside our happy ground;
 He could not wait their passing, he is dead.

 So, some tempestuous morn in early June,
 When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er,
 Before the roses and the longest day--
 When garden-walks and all the grassy floor
 With blossoms red and white of fallen May
 And chestnut-flowers are strewn--
 So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,
 From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees,
 Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze:
 The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I!

 Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?
 Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,
 Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
 Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
 Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell,
 And stocks in fragrant blow;
 Roses that down the alleys shine afar,
 And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,
 And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,
 And the full moon, and the white evening-star.

 He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown!
 What matters it? next year he will return,
 And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days,
 With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern,
 And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways,
 And scent of hay new-mown.
 But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see;
 See him come back, and cut a smoother reed,
 And blow a strain the world at last shall heed--
 For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer'd thee!

 Alack, for Corydon no rival now!--
 But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate,
 Some good survivor with his flute would go,
 Piping a ditty sad for Bion's fate;
 And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow,
 And relax Pluto's brow,
 And make leap up with joy the beauteous head
 Of Proserpine, among whose crowned hair
 Are flowers first open'd on Sicilian air,
 And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead.

 O easy access to the hearer's grace
 When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!
 For she herself had trod Sicilian fields,
 She knew the Dorian water's gush divine,
 She knew each lily white which Enna yields
 Each rose with blushing face;
 She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain.
 But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard!
 Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirr'd;
 And we should tease her with our plaint in vain!

 Well! wind-dispersed and vain the words will be,
 Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour
 In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp'd hill!
 Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?
 I know the wood which hides the daffodil,
 I know the Fyfield tree,
 I know what white, wha