[edgar] MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET. 319 



note the fact that even he was compelled to the method of detached 

 utterance. A certain reticence of grief, classical restraint call it if 

 you will, was to be expected from a temperament so schooled in moder- 

 ation as Arnold's, and the discreet pastoral setting which he chose 

 for his "Thyrsis" appears to me the happiest solution of his difficulty. 

 The form also was consecrated by tradition, — no light thing in Arnold's 

 esteem, and it only remained for him to prove that he had sufficient 

 freshness of imagination to redeem his experiment from banality. 

 We all know how magnificently he succeeded. The obstacles them- 

 selves became his inspiration, and no other modern poet has so well 

 demonstrated the debt which sincerity may owe to artifice. 



Not like the cuckoo-bird will Thyrsis return with the returning 

 spring: 



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! 

 And here follow, who can forget them ? two stanzas in which beauty 

 of phrase and conception are so intimately fused that each re-reading 

 is an intensification of our original delight: 



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, 



