The Sad Shepherd
SHEPHERD
That cry's from the first cuckoo of the yearI wished before it ceased.
GOATHERD
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.
SHEPHERD
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.
GOATHERD
I know right wellWhat turned so good a shepherd from his charge.
SHEPHERD
He that was best in every country sportAnd every country craft, and of us allMost courteous to slow age and hasty youthIs dead.
GOATHERD
The boy that brings my griddle cakeBrought the bare news.
SHEPHERD
He had thrown the crook awayAnd died in the great war beyond the sea.
GOATHERD
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.
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 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.
SHEPHERD
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.
GOATHERD
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.
SHEPHERD
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.
GOATHERD
You have put the thought in rhyme.
SHEPHERD
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.
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