BOOK II

They have not gone from us. O no! they are
The inmost essence of each thing that is
Perfect for us; they flame in every star;
The trees are emerald with their presences.
They are not gone from us; they do not roam
The flaw and turmoil of the lower deep,
But have now made the whole wide world their home,
And in its loveliness themselves they steep.

They fail not ever; theirs is the diurn
Splendour of sunny hill and forest grave;
In every rainbow's glittering drop they burn;
They dazzle in the massed clouds' architrave;
They chant on every wind, and they return
In the long roll of any deep blue wave.

VIII.—DELIVERANCE

Out of the Night! out of the Night I come:
Free at last: the whole world is my home:
I have lost self: I look not on myself again,
But if I do I see a man among men.

Out of the Night! out of the Night, O Flesh:
Soul I know not from Body within thy mesh:
Accepting all that is, I cannot divide the same:
I accept the smoke because I accept the flame.

Out of the Night! out of the Night, O Friends:
O all my dead, think ye our friendship ends?
Harold, Kenneth, Dick, many hearts that were true,
While I breathe breath, I am breathing you.

Out of the Night! out of the Night, O Power:
Many a fight to be won, many an awful hour;
Many an hour to wish death ere I go to death,
Many an hour to bless breath ere I cease from breath.

Out of the Night! out of the Night, O Soul:
Give thanks to the Night: Night and Day are the Whole.
I count mere life-breath nothing now I know Life's worth
Lies all in spending! that known, love Life and Earth.

BOOK II

To my Brother
PHILIP NICHOLS

'O Fantaisie, emporte-moi sur tes ailes pour désennuyer ma tristesse!'

Flaubert.

Roughly planned in Spring, 1914, at Oxford. "Midday in Arcadia" composed July, 1914; "Catch for Spring" adapted from version of 1912 during the same month: both at Grayshott. Taken up again in February, 1916, continued at the Hut, Bray, and, after being frequently interrupted, finished on February 18, 1917, at Ilsington.

The author intends the "hulli" and the "lulli" of the Faun's call in 'Faun's Rally' to be pronounced as if they rhymed with such a word as "fully."

A FAUN'S HOLIDAY

Hark! a sound. Is it I sleep?
Wake I? or do my senses keep
Commune yet with thoughtful night
And dream they feel, not see, the light
That, with a chord as if a lyre
Were upward swept by tongues of fire,
Spreads in all-seeing majesty
Over crag, dale, curved shore, and sea?

If this be sleep, I do not sleep.
I hear the little woodnote weep
Of a shy, darkling bird which cries
In a sweet-fluted, sharp surprise
At glimpse of me, the faun-beast, sleeping
Nigh under her. My crook'd leg, sweeping
Some dream away, perhaps, awoke her,
For dew shook from a bough doth soak her.

And all elsewhere how still it is!—
The mist beyond the precipice
Smokes gently up. The bushes hang
Over the gulph 'cross which I sprang
Last midnight,—though the unicorn,
Who with clanged hooves and lowered horn
Raging pursued, now hidden lies
Amid the cragside dewberries
And sweats his frosty flanks in sleep,
Dreaming he views again my leap
Thrice hazardous.
The silver chasm
Sighs, and many a blithe phantasm
Turns in the sunlight's quivering ray.
I couch in peace. Thoughts fond and gay
Feed on my sense of maiden hours
And earth refreshed by suns and showers
Of nightly dew and heavy quiet.—
Though last night rang with dinning riot:
Dionysos in headlong mood
Ranged through the labyrinthine wood;
Fleet maids sped, yelping, on with him,
Brandishing a torn heifer's limb,
Dissonant cymbals, or black bowl
Of wine and blood; a wolfish howl
Fled ululant with them....
Now there is
Depth, the white mist, the great sun, peace.

Too numb such sunshine!—Let me hence
Out of the solemn imminence
Of yon chill spire whose shadow creeps
Toward me from the stagnant deeps
Of the ravine. For now I will
Descend and take again my fill
Of fancy wild and musing joy,
Such as each dawn brings to alloy
The long affliction of a spirit
Who a complete world did inherit,
And feels it crumbling.
I will down
Whither twin bluffs of sheer stone frown
Over sunk seas of billowing pine
Terrace on terrace, line on line,
Below whose heads the broad downs slope
Away, away till senses grope
At something rather felt than seen:
The sea,—not wave-tops, but a sheen
Under the dazed and distant sky....
Curled on a cliff-top let me lie.
(For yonder, hap, a breeze is blowing,
And the sun's first gleam is showing
Under far wreckage: since our height
Inherits day while yet their light
Quakes gold under the low clouds' rift.)
Down, then! Miraculously swift
These limbs the gods have given me!...
Couched mid the gorse, anon I see,
Opposing this my bluff, the face
Of the sheer rock, and 'long it trace
A sill scarce ample for a goat,
Yet midway in the ledge-path note
A cave's mouth, which thick creepers hide
Fallen in a silvery tide
From a slant crevice overhead.
And, lo! the creeper stirs, is shed—
And all falls quiet.
Till at last
Issues a voice deep, young and vast:

Centaur. Up! the ag'd centaurs lie yet sleeping,
While crouch I palled of this cavern lair
And watch the stretched sea-eagle sweeping
Down the grey-blue drizzling air.
The sea-nymphs, too, will now be waking,
If sickle-eyed they have not played
Across the moonlight sets me aching,
Longing and slinking, half afraid,
Down the feathery, tawny sand
On sighing tread
Deep into banks of glistering shell,
To halt in dread
Lest my hoof-scrunch break the spell
Of the syren-chants that swell
From the dim shoals toward the land.

But this morn the breeze is blowing
Freshly: I hear lightly flowing
From the bending giant beam
Bars the forehead of our door
The golden raindrops in a stream
Pattering on the steamy floor.

Faun. It is the Centaur's voice I hear!
Young and lusty, deep and clear:
And the Panisks at his voice
In their fastnesses rejoice,
Emerging from the creviced crag
Or cave beneath the mountain's jag,
Merry, shaggy, light of hoof,
To run along the narrow roof,
And upon the shelvèd height
Dance before the swimming light.

Centaur. And I see upon the ledge,
Astir over the hanging edge,
A russet briar cold with dew
And beyond, forlornly pent
In a grey cloud's gliding rent,
A pure pool of the brightest blue:
So near it seems I've but to cast
A flint out on the forward vast
To mark it flashing blithely through!

And now at last!
At last
The great Sun,
The Sudden One,
Stamps upon the cloudy floor;
The heavens are split, and through the floor
Heaven's golden treasures tumbling pour....
And the Sun himself, divine,
Doth descend
In such a bursting blaze of shine
That his glorious hair is shook
Over the wide world's craggiest end!
And, even I, I dare not look.

I will shout! I will ramp!
Just three bounds: then out and stamp
Where the air like water is
Eddying up over the precipice;—
Wind with an edge to it, sea-damp,
Blowing from the canyon's race
Where the dripping sea-wind heaves
Through a tunnel of the rocks
Sea-water up in thunderous sheaves
Against the precipitous water-rapids,
To whip from off th' high-hurtled shocks
Bursts of mist which soak the leaves
Of each scented bush that cleaves
To the cliffs. Till Fauns and Lapiths
Dance in the sun-bewildered brakes,
Till even flushed Silenus wakes,
And—with a short deep-throated troll
To the wind and to the wine,
Both delirious, both divine!—
Starts, as he drains the tilted bowl,
At din, to rolling uproar grown,
Of rocks dislodged and bounding down,
With splinter of pines and flint-shocked flashes,
From the ridge whereon we dance
In a loud exuberance
Of rattling hoofs whose echoes drown
The squealing joy or reedy pining
Of Pan's pipe, where Pan reclining
Plays in the clouded mountain's crown!

Faun. It is the Centaur's voice I hear.
The creeper tresses toss with fear,
Then part before a pow'rful hand.
See, see, O see the Centaur stand
With ruggëd head erect and proud,
Whose rounded mouth yet chants aloud
The Joy of Mind fulfilled in Force:
Glory of Man, glory of Horse.

Hail thou, the sov'reign of the hill!
Hail thou, upon whose locks distil
Fresh dews when mid majestic night
Thou pacest, hid, along the height.
Thine are the solitudes of snow
Between bare peaks, thy hooves also
Are heard within the dusk defile
Where Titans of a sunless while
Fashioned huge sphinxes in whose eyes
The Kite now skulks or, girding, cries.
Thine, too, the sole and sinking pine
Burned by the sunset—ay, and thine
The ledges whence a sudden sift
Of snow sighs downward, thine the swift
Uproar of avalanche and all
The mountain echoes. To thee call,
When the snow melts and there are seen
Crocuses blazing mid the green
Of the dewed grass, the Sylvan folk:
The Dryads from the leafless oak
Or budded elder, that at length
Thou mayst release them by the strength
Of thy tough fingers; 'tis on thee
The nymphs cry should the runnels be
Exhausted of the midsummer sun,
Sith, stamping, thou canst make to run
The hoarded waters of the wold.
And among men thou art of old
Thought's emblem: for to thee belong
All gifts of deep, wise, epic song.
Hail, then, whom Earth and mankind hails.
And Ocean, whose high-spouting whales
And dripping serpents, that arise
Swinging their gold crests to the skies
To drink in all thy bold descant
Hail, though they cannot view thee chant,
As I who now behold in sooth
Thy lighted eyes and singing mouth.

O grape-hung locks! glorious face,
Capacious frame, sinewy grace
Of arm that lifts a skully lyre
Whose dithyramb whirls ever higher!
Deep breast-bone, belly, curvèd thews—
Such as the tussling oak doth use
Upon the crumbled scarp to grip—
Striking from trunk down through the hip
Into the stallion's massive shoulders
Glossy as moonlit ice-bound boulders!
Stiff, stalwart forelegs, heavy hoof
Yet fleeter far on heights aloof
Than ev'n such doubled hares as race
Blue 'thwart dim fells, or, speck in space,
Osprey, gale-swept across the tides!
Thy man's trunk glisters; on thy sides
A soft and silver shagginess,
Inviting slim hands to caress,
Hangs dewy——

Centaur. Faun, Faun, art thou near?

Faun. Behold me stand, proud Centaur, here
Upon the bluff where 'neath me lies
The sunned pool of the precipice.

Centaur. Faun, in my veins the blood 'gins race,
The new sun sweats upon my face,
Dazzles my pupils, golden swims
Over my flushed and fervid limbs.
I feel in me my spirit rise
Griffon-like flogging up tall skies.
Now is the Morning of the World,
And through my heart a flood is hurled
Of onerous joyance, of desire
To clutch the sun and spill its fire
Down heaven's blue bulwarks! to snatch life
And drain its lusty full in strife
Of all my body with the bent
Wrestle of every element:
Close with the whirlwind, front the tide
And turn its moony press aside.

But in the world I cannot find
A match in strength, a foe in mind....
At dawn, at eve the waters burn;
All night the constellations turn
Round the dark pole, and none knows why....
None seeks to know save only I
And thou, O Faun. We are alone....
Yet sometimes, when the wind is gone
And all below shines sunned and still,
I feel depart from me the will
Merely to know, to know and wait:
I would do more: I would create.
Though what I know not; but I would
Spend this my mind and hardihood.
Yet find no means save physic force:—
Sing as a man, stride as a horse.
Then stride I? Swift I overcome
The fleetest. Sing I? All are dumb.
Natheless my heart demands in grief
Ardour, endurance and relief;
Asks, but receives not.

Faun. Shall not I
Echo thy pain, whom Fates deny
Answer to thought,—as they to thee
The lust-of-action's fill? But we
Accept too much, O Sire. 'Twere best,
Though idly, to fulfil our zest.

Four leagues this canyon runs between
Us twain or ever there is seen
The arch of rock whose massy grace
Bridges yon gap of golden space.
Deignest thou, then, to race with me
From such tall eyries to the sea,
If even now I upward leap?

Centaur. Leap then! I catch thee e'er the steep
Subsides in woodland or in down.

Away! My rapping footfalls drown
All but the sobbing of the wind
Within my ears and loud behind
The thunder of the Centaur's hooves
Where, like a hailstorm, down he moves.
Past me the spun pines rock and hiss,
Behind my feet stones pelted whizz,
Hills rise before me, backward flow,
The bare downs, bright'ning, mount below....
On. On. Down. Down. But, ah, no more!
My breath comes keener than the frore
Indraught of age-long mountain frost;
My head turns dizzy, feet are lost.
Yet scamper feet! A rock—a mound:
Rap! Rap! I soar it at a bound.
On. On. Down. Down. A sudden brook,
And now—in mid-air—lo! there look
Laughingly up at me the eyes
Of Hyads, and their fading cries
Ring in my ears. Can they have seen
The Centaur hurtle by between
Them and the clouds? The downs up-fly.
Now earth's bowl rocks and reels the sky
And through my chilly flaming tears
The molten sun swoops, bursts, and veers....

Still rap my hoofs, though but the sound
Tells me they yet rocket the ground.
The uproar loudens more behind.
My crook'd legs cross, my eyes go blind.
I claw the sky: for, O! I can
Scarce lurch. I feel the sudden fan
Of the great Centaur's galey breath
Upon my nape, and like chill death
His hand descends. But, ah! he laughs
Even as Bacchus when he quaffs
In jest or taunt a double bowl.
I, choking, reel, and, tripping, roll
Wildly aside. See! as I fall
A rampant shape majestical
Storms vehement by, and, storming, swings
Hand across rushing lyre, which rings
To strains, like rolling breakers tossed
High o'er an adamantine coast,
In praise of elemental Mirth,
Strength, Beauty and the Golden Earth!

Beyond the rocks, below the trees,
The great downs lie; nought but the breeze
Is heard upon them. All day long
The shadows of the great clouds throng
Across their sides: a noiseless rout.
Sometimes a peewit, blown about
By airy surge, cries a lone cry
Ere hurtled down the clarid sky;
Sometimes is heard a shepherd's voice
Shouting, and after it the noise
Of many-pattering crowded sheep
Herded within the gay dog's keep,
Who also, barking, shouts. Save these
Nought breaks the breezy silences
Of the green sun-swept, cloud-swept spaces....

Such downs Pan loves, and ofttime places
His lonely altars on them.
I
One of such now behold. A high
Mound bears it, and its nakedness
Of festal fruit and fragrant dress
Hints 'tis new-built.
Up, then, and sound
A rally to the sacred ground:

Faun. Come ye, merry shepherds all,
Hulli-lulli-li-lo!
Listen to my piping call:
Hulli-li-lo!
Hasten to Pan's festival;
Leave your sheep.
Cannot Pan a shrewd watch keep
O'er his own?
Safe are they as pent in stall;
Safe are they, for Pan has thrown
Fear about them like a wall.

Wherefore, shepherds, hither run.

I have set my pipes to lip;
Now they cry despondingly
As mid shaken locks I dip.
Now shrill—as hark!—I lift them high
To swirl the tune about the sky!
Up and down and round the sky
Till want I further force to blow....
Wherefore, shepherds, hither run,
Dance behind me as I skip;
Strike the tóssed támbours in únison,
Dance, dance and make to dance the sun
To your Hulli-li-lo!

Shepherds. Faun, I come. I hear. We hear—

Faun. This my Hulli-li-lo:
Now afar and now anear.

Shepherds. Never sped the midnight deer
Half so fast
'Fore Diana's star-ringed spear
As now haste we to appear
At thy Hulli-li-lo!

Faun. Joy, O shepherds, at the sound:
Hulli-lulli-li-lo!
Pan's new altar I have found:
Hulli-li-lo!
Cowslips prank its holy mound,
With ivy have I wreathed it round—
But not yet
Is the altar's dress complete
Till with flowers its horns are bound.

Shepherds. Faun, we hear, and from the brook
Flags are pulled; and now we hook
Honeysuckle high, low
Down to us with shepherd's crook;
Breathing floss,
Clematis twines, rushy stook,
Apple blossom, down is shook
At thy Hulli-li-lo!

Faun. Wreathe the pedestal anew;
Hulli-lulli-li-lo!
Scatter violets scattering dew;
Hulli-li-lo!
Honey that the brown bees brew
Pour, and rosy blossoms strew;
Spill such wine
As in dim-bloomed clusters grew
On your father's father's vine.

Dance you now.
I my pipe cease—thus—to blow:
Dance you on.
Dance about the sacred mound,
Dance when every sound is gone....
Now the timbrels softly, sprightly
Beat, and foot it gaily, lightly;
Tiptoe o'er the secret ground,
Dance the round.

Next, to the sole, trilling flute
And your own subduèd laughter
Flutter all in throngs and mazes,
Chase in streams of ardent faces,
With bright eyes and oped mouth mute.
Now alone,
One by one,
Dance and dream, and dreaming float
Till the multitude drifts after,
And I wake a quicker note:
Clap your hands aloft and cry;
Surge in line tumultuously;
Cry, and with a whirl of voices
Fright the pigeons whickering by!
Praise the God of field and fold!
Shout until the hills have told,
By their sudden echoes flying,
Flying, crying, falling, dying,
That upon his name we call,
Who beside the river lying
Hears us keep his festival.

Wearied of solitary hills,
On which the wannish sunlight spills,
And which the glooms of high clouds cross,
Clouds wandering ever at a loss
About th' immeasurable sky,
I will descend. And by-and-by
Glimpse beneath the shouldered down
A hamlet reeking golden-brown;
Creep through a willow copse to view
Under an orchard avenue,
A lithe girl in a sun-splashed smock
Calling her perchëd pigeon flock,
And as they coo and flutter over
Laughing and carolling of her lover.

Girl. 'Little pigeon, grave and fleet'—
All the golden grain you'd eat,
Greedy! let the little bird
Pick some. Sweet, your cooing's heard;
You shall have this. There! Be bolder:
Light you now upon my shoulder....
Cooroo? Cooroo in my ear?
Darling, yes, I hear, I hear:
From this hand, then, you shall pluck it.
Foolish love! your wings have struck it,
Spilt the grain the grass among.
—Flutter! Flutter!—where's my song?
'Little pigeon, grave and fleet'—
Too late now your wings you beat
By my face: look in the ground;
There, they say, all gold is found.

Little pigeon, grave and fleet,
Eye-of-fire, sweet Snowy-wings,
Think you that you can discover
On what great green down my lover
Lies by his sunny sheep and sings?

If you can, O go and greet
Him from me; say: She is waiting....
Not for him, O no! but, sweet,
Say June's nigh and doves, remating,
Fill the dancing noontide heat
With melodious debating.

Say the swift swoops from the beam;
Soon the cuckoo must cease calling;
Kingcups flare beside the stream,
That not glides now but runs brawling;
That wet roses are asteam
In the sun and will be falling.

Say the chestnut sheds his bloom;
Honey from straw hivings oozes;
There's a nightjar in the coombe;
Venus nightly burns, and chooses
Most to blaze above my room;
That the laggard 'tis that loses.

Say the nights are warm and free,
And the great stars swarm above him;
But soon starless night must be.
Yet if all these do not move him,
Tell, O tell—but not too plainly!—
That I long for him and love him.

Little pigeon, grave and fleet,
Fly you swiftly, tell him this;
And I'll give you grain so golden
Midas' self has ne'er beholden
Aught so gold, and—yes!—a kiss.

Smiling at her eager voice,
I will grant the girl her choice,
Whispering to the pigeon: "Lo!
Yon's the way for you to go:
Over the willows, past the copse,
To where a sylph-like lime-tree tops
A lonely knoll; then on and on
Toward where yesternight there shone
A silver comet, scarce descried,
Against the fainting eventide."

Away then! crashing through the wood,
Prancing in a whimsey mood,
To yowl as a she-wolf does at dark
Until th' infuriate watch-dogs bark;
Or bid hushed tales of ghosts go round,
Of warnings heard, but nothing found,
By whistling at the village boor;
Or poke my rogue face round a door
And scare a huffy wife to fits,
Who swears, "'Tis Pan himself!" or, "It's
That grizzled sailor-man who slew
His mate 'twixt Bogs and Dead Man's Yew!"
Next through the dairy steal to slake
My thirst with cream, with honeycake
Cram my sweet maw; slip in the churn
A farm cat, that the tub may turn
And fright maid Molly. I will seek
Strawberries and stain chin, mouth and cheek
With nuzzling in their scarlet bowl;
Then in the goodman's bed I'll roll
Because he loves me not; I'll sing
Until the crowded rafters ring
The while about my ears I hang
Bobbed cherries.... Lastly I will clang
Among the clattering pots and pans,
Shout, cry "Oh help!" snatch up a man's
Cloak, and slip out.

Whoop! Whoop! They run:
The hare once spied, the hunt's begun!—
Goodman and goodman's wife, pert Polly,
Clown Colin, Wiggen and maid Molly,
Pant, crying, "Thief!" The while behind
Shrunk Dorcas hops, and fills the wind
With apish merriment, shrill malice,
And cries of—"Well run, Poll! Run, Alice!
Run, child! The master's cloak and all!
How sad the goodman's ta'en a fall!
Mistress down, too—he! he! what pity!
Run, Alice child, my bird, my pretty;
Show 'em how nimble thou canst be,—
Ay, but the girl runs prettily.
Run, Hobbinol, thou gawky man!
Thou mayest kiss if catch thou can!
Odd's me! and what's it all about?
A thief? That mischief Faun!"
A shout
Startles the pigeons from the croft:
"We've circled him!" "He's in the loft."
But as they, silent, crowd unto 't
I jump. For am not I a goat?
From out the hayloft's height I leap
O'er their craned heads into the deep
Grass of the orchard. Thence I run
Across lush meadows. One by one
They fall behind....
A scarecrow I
Now seek, and 'bout it carefully
Enwrap the newly pilfered cloak....
Scarecrows are such poor crazy folk....

So to a thorny thicket dense
With rosy-coloured may-bloom, whence
I can hear a torrent rumble,
And, peering forth, behold it tumble
Cumbrously into a pool whose white
Tumult sears the giddied sight.
There, half dozed, silent, smile to hear
A babble of voices drawing near,
Spy many a boy and laughing lass
Racing hands-linked across the grass.

Boys and Girls. Now has the blue-eyed Spring
Sped dancing through the plain.
Girls weave a daisy chain;
Boys race beside the sedge;
Dust fills the blinding lane;
May lies upon the hedge:
All creatures love the spring!

The clouds laugh on, and would
Dance with us if they could;
The larks ascend and shrill;
A woodpecker fills the wood;
Jays laugh crossing the hill:
All creatures love the spring!

The lithe cloud-shadows chase
Over the whole earth's face,
And where winds ruffling veer
O'er wooded streams' dark ways
Mad fish upscudding steer:
All creatures love the spring!

Into the dairy cool
Run, girls, to drink thick cream!
Race, boys, to where the stream
Winds through a rumbling pool,
And your bright bodies fling
Into the foaming cool!
For we'll enjoy our spring!

VII.—SONNET: OUR DEAD

VIII.—DELIVERANCE

BOOK II

A FAUN'S HOLIDAY

To my Brother PHILIP NICHOLS

A FAUN'S HOLIDAY

To my Brother
PHILIP NICHOLS