...thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return ! Thee, shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, And all their echoes mourn. The willows, and the hazel copses green, Shall now no more be seen Fanning their joyous leaves...

...From, the glad sound would not be absent long; 35 And old DamoBtas loved to hear our song. But, 0, the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return ! Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves. With wild thyme and the gadding vine...

...Damoetas loved to hear our song. Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, Temper'd to the oaten flute ; But, O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return ! Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves With wild thyme and the gadding vine...

...Contrast, eg, the brief expression of personal sorrow in these two lines from " Lycidas "— "But, oh! the heavy change now thou art gone — Now thou art gone and never must return!" and in this line from " Thyrsis "— " They all are gone, and tho i art gone as well,"...

...thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return ! Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves, With wild thyme, and the gadding vine o'ergrown, And all their echoes mourn : The willows and the hazel copses green Shall now no more be seen, Fanning their joyous leaves...

...lament or celebrate a youth or age that yet shall not avail against the still unbroken universe of God. But O the heavy change, now thou art gone, now thou art gone, and we are set adrift in th'eclipse. Any wastes, like Carthage burnd & salted, cities of despair, are better...

...tone of the passage evoke the literary tradition of elegy. We are reminded, for example, of Lycidas: But O the heavy change, now thou art gone Now thou art gone, and never must return . . . (lines 37-8, my italics) and: Shall no more be seen (line 43, my italics)'7 and of...

...clov'n heel From the glad sound would not be absent long, And old Damaetas lov'd to hear our song. But O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must retum! Thee shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves. With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,...

...transferring the mourning activity from himself to nature: "Thee Shepherd, thee the Woods, and desert Caves,/ With wild Thyme and the gadding Vine o'ergrown,/ And all their echoes mourn" (11. 39-41). The blight is on nature, associated with the speaker only through the remote figure...

...and rural ditties; he dared to express the age-old sense of loss in language plain and repetitious: But O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return! Thee, shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves, With wild thyme and the gadding vine...