But what – I dream! Two hundred years are flown;
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.
No, no thou hast not felt the lapse of hours,
Thou waitest for the spark from Heaven! And we,
Ah, do not we, Wanderer, await it too?
See, ‘tis no foot of unfamiliar men
Today from Oxford, up your pathway strays!
Here came I often, often in old days;
Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,
Up past the wood, to where the elm-tree crowns 
The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?
The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,
The vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames?
That single elm-tree bright
Against the west – I miss it! Is it gone?
We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said,
Our friend, the Scholar Gipsy, was not dead;
While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on.

Needs must I, with heavy heart
Into the world and wave of men depart;
But Thyrsis of his own will went away.
So have I heard the cuckoo’s parting cry,
From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees,
Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze:

The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I?

Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?

Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have the gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweet-William with his homely cottage smell,
And stocks in fragrant blow;
Roses that down alleys shine afar,
And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,
And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,
And the full moon, and the white evening star.

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.

He will return. 

But Thyrsis, nevermore we swains shall see.

Nevermore

Yet Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour
In the old haunt, and find our tree-topped hill.
I know these slopes, who knows them if not I!
But many a dingle on the loved hill-side,
With thorns once studded, old, white-blossom’d trees,
Where the thick cowslips grew, and, far descried,
High tower’d the spikes of purple orchises, 
Hath since our day put by
The coronals of that forgotten time
They all are gone, and thou art gone as well. 

Yes, thou art gone! And round me too the night
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.
I see her veil draw soft across the day,
And long the way appears, which seem’d so short
And high the mountain-tops in cloudy air
The mountain tops where is the throne of Truth.

There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here
Sole in these fields; yet will I not despair;
Despair I will not, while I yet descry
That lonely tree against the western sky.
Fields where soft sheep from cages pull the hay,
Woods with anemones in flower till May
Know him a wanderer still.

Roam on!

Then let in thy voice a whisper often come,
To chase fatigue and fear.

Why faintest thou? I wandered till I died.
Roam on! The light we sought is shining still.
Our tree yet crowns the hill,
Our Scholar travels yet the loved hillside.  

(Words in italics are sung)