8 4 
NATURE NOTES. 
On its ivied windows ; a scent 
From the grey- walled gardens, a breath 
Of the fragrant stock and the pink, 
Perfumes the evening air.’ 
“ With the elegiac poems which fill the second half of the 
second volume our extracts must become more numerous. The 
following are from the Scholar Gipsy : — 
“ 1 Screen’d is this nook o’er the high, half reap’d field, 
And here till sun-down, shepherd ! will I be ; 
Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, 
And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see 
Pale pink' convolvulus in tendrils creep ; 
And air-swept lindens yield 
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers 
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid, 
And bower me from the August sun with shade ; 
And the eye travels down to Oxford’s towers. 
“ ‘ And then they land, and thou art seen no more ! 
Maidens, who from the distant hamlets come 
To dance around the Fyfield elm in May, 
Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam, 
Or cross a stile into the public way. 
Oft thou hast given them store 
Of flowers— the frail-leafd, white anemony, 
Dark bluebells drenched with dews of summer eves, 
And purple orchises with spotted leaves — 
But none hath words she can report of thee. 
“ 1 And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time’s here 
In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames, 
Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass 
Where black -wing’d swallows haunt the glittering Thames, 
To bathe in the abandon’d lasher pass, 
Have often pass’d thee near 
Sitting upon the river bank o’ergrown ; 
Mark’d thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare, 
Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air — 
But, w'hen they came from bathing, thou wast gone ! 
“ ‘ But what — I dream ! Two hundred years are flown 
Since first thy story ran through Oxford halls, 
And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribe 
That thou wert wander’d from the studious walls 
To learn strange arts, and join a gipsy-tribe ; 
And thou from earth art gone 
Long since, and in some quiet churchyard laid — 
Some country-nook, where o’er thy unknown grave 
Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave. 
Under a dark, red-fruited yew-tree’s shade.’ ” 
M. E. Grant Duff. 
(To be continued.) 
* Mr. Arnold first wrote “blue convolvulus,” but corrected the slip, as Mr. 
Keble, his godfather, did in the note in “ The Christian Year,” which, as origi- 
nally penned, made the Rhododendron, not the Oleander, grow on the shores of 
Gennesaret. 
