Classic Poem

Once I remember, in a far-off June,
Leaving the studious cloister of my youth,
Beside the young Thames' stream I laid me down,
Wearied, upon a bank. 'Twas mid-summer;
The warm earth teemed with flowers; the kingcup's gold,
The perfumed clover, 'mid the crested grass,
The plantains rearing high their flowery crowns
Above the daisied coverts; overhead,
The hawthorns, white and rosy, bent with bloom,
The broad-spread chestnuts spiked with frequent flowers,
And white gold-hearted lilies on the stream;
All these made joy within my heart, and woke
The fair idyllic phantasies of Greece;
And dreaming, well content with the rich charm
Of summer England, long I idly mused:
“And were the deep-set vales of Thessaly
Or fair Olympian beech-groves more than this?
Or the Sicilian meads more rich in flowers,
Where the lost goddess plucked the asphodel?
Or flowed the clear stream through a lovelier shade
Where Dian bathed and rapt Actæon saw?
Or were they purer depths where Hylas played
Till the nymphs drew him down? Ah, fairer dreams
Than our poor England holds! Grave, toil-worn land!
Poor agèd mother of a graceless brood,
With shambling gait and limbs by labour bent!
What should she know of such?”
When straight I heard
A ripple of boyish mirth, and looking saw
Far off along the meads a gliding boat
Float noiselessly; lithe forms at either end—
The self-same forms which Phidias fixed of old—
With tall poles, pressed it forward, others lay
Reclined, and all had crowned their short smooth hair
With lilies from the stream, while one had shaped
Some hollow reed in semblance of a pipe,
Making a shrill faint sound—a joyous crew,
Clothed with the grace of innocent nakedness
Then, while they yet were far, ere yet a sound
Of their poor rustic tones assailed the sense,
Or too great nearness marred the grace of form—

Poised sudden in a white row, side by side,
They plunged down headlong in the sweet warm tide
Then, as I went, within myself I said,
“The young Apollo is not wholly fled,
Nor can long centuries of toil and care
Make youth less comely or the earth less fair
To the world's ending Joy and Grace shall be.
I, too, have been to-day in Arcady.”