| Shepherd | That cry’s from the first cuckoo of the year | |
| I wished before it ceased. | |
| |
| Goatherd | Nor bird nor beast | |
| Could make me wish for anything this day, | |
| Being old, but that the old alone might die, | 5 |
| 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. | 10 |
| |
| Shepherd. | I am looking for strayed sheep; | |
| Something has troubled me and in my trouble | |
| I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone, | |
| For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble | |
| And make the daylight sweet once more; but when | 15 |
| I had driven every rhyme into its place | |
| The sheep had gone from theirs. | |
| |
| Goatherd. | I know right well | |
| What turned so good a shepherd from his charge. | |
| |
| Shepherd. | He that was best in every country sport | 20 |
| And every country craft, and of us all | |
| Most courteous to slow age and hasty youth | |
| Is dead. | |
| |
| Goatherd. | The boy that brings my griddle cake | |
| Brought the bare news. | 25 |
| |
| Shepherd. | He had thrown the crook away | |
| And died in the great war beyond the sea. | |
| |
| Goatherd. | He had often played his pipes among my hills | |
| And when he played it was their loneliness, | |
| The exultation of their stone, that cried | 30 |
| Under his fingers. | |
| |
| Shepherd. | I had it from his mother, | |
| And his own flock was browsing at the door. | |
| |
| Goatherd. | How does she bear her grief? There is not a shepherd | |
| But grows more gentle when he speaks her name, | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
| |
| 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 | 45 |
| But such as I have seen upon her face | |
| Watching our shepherd sports at harvest-time | |
| When her son’s turn was over. | |
| |
| Goatherd. | Sing your song, | |
| I too have rhymed my reveries, but youth | 50 |
| 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. | 55 |
| |
| 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, | 60 |
| 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. | 65 |
| |
| Goatherd. | You have put the thought in rhyme. | |
| |
| 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 [He sings.] | 70 |
| ‘Like the speckled bird that steers | |
| Thousands of leagues oversea, | |
| And runs for a while or a while half-flies | |
| Upon his yellow legs through our meadows, | |
| He stayed for a while; and we | 75 |
| Had scarcely accustomed our ears | |
| To his speech at the break of day, | |
| Had scarcely accustomed our eyes | |
| To his shape in the lengethening shadows, | |
| Where the sheep are thrown in the pool, | 80 |
| When he vanished from ears and eyes. | |
| I had wished a dear thing on that day | |
| I heard him first, but man is a fool.’ | |
| |
| Goatherd. | You sing as always of the natural life, | |
| And I that made like music in my youth | 85 |
| Hearing it now have sighed for that young man | |
| And certain lost companions of my own. | |
| |
| 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; | 90 |
| That you have talked with apparitions. | |
| |
| Goatherd. | Indeed | |
| My daily thoughts since the first stupor of youth | |
| Have found the path my goats’ feet cannot find. | |
| |
| Shepherd. | Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have plucked | 95 |
| Some medicable herb to make our grief | |
| Less bitter. | |
| |
| Goatherd. | They have brought me from that ridge | |
| Seed-pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy. [Sings.] | |
| ‘He grows younger every second | 100 |
| 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. | 105 |
| 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. | 110 |
| The outrageous war shall fade; | |
| At some old winding whitethorn root | |
| He’ll practice on the shepherd’s flute, | |
| Or on the close-cropped grass | |
| Court his shepherd lass, | 115 |
| Or run where lads reform our daytime | |
| Till that is their long shouting playtime; | |
| Knowledge he shall unwind | |
| Through victories of the mind, | |
| Till, clambering at the cradle side, | 120 |
| He dreams himself his mother’s pride, | |
| All knowledge lost in trance | |
| Of sweeter ignorance.’ | |
| |
| Shepherd. | When I have shut these ewes and this old ram | |
| Into the fold, we’ll to the woods and there | 125 |
| 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 grieve | |
| May be a quiet thought to wife and mother, | |
| And children when they spring up shoulder high. | 130 |
