Seaward my forest way I'll take,
And at a pool's lit quietude slake
My thirst, and feel a dull flame creep
Like the first flux of tidal sleep
Through all my limbs. Yet, when I sink
Sleepward, start wide-eyed up to drink
The sunned wood's wet deliciousness,
Touch flowers, and feel the sun's caress
About my locks, and wander on,
Or pause to smile up at the sun,
Guarding my eyes with glowing hand,
Or, leaned against a beech-trunk, stand
Watching between the branches' rift,
As they gently wave and lift
To the bland breeze softly blowing,
The noiseless clouds serenely going
Slowly to the hid, low sea
I can hear breathing slumberously.
Till from the woodland I emerge,
Greeted by a louder surge,
And from the bushy cliff-top spy
How the hollow bay doth lie
One quiver and murmur under the sun,
And how the lightsome wind-puffs run
Chasing each other crookedly,
Over the idly heaving sea.

Next I will turn my eyes, perhaps,
To where the languid waters lapse
Glittering over a sunburned rock
Round which the shrieking white gulls flock....
Thus browsing in my solitude,
I may remember I've a feud
With the Sea-Horses, once who drave
Me from the sea-light of their cave.
Enough! and, crashing down, I come
To find them drowsing in their home....
So creep I with a crooked stick
To where a blinding pool is quick
With green electric water-snakes.
Sprawling across a rock which bakes
I stir the molten till they boil
And up my hawthorn kick and coil;
Then scamper, rocketing, to the cave,
Hurl the stick in. Hark! how they rave,
And plunge up clattering, kicking, neighing,
Till Triton on his horn 'gins braying,
And each hasteneth to belabour
With hooves or tear with teeth his neighbour,
And from the cavern's blueness rush
Into the simmering beach's hush,
To stand, with heaving flanks, agaze
At the hot stones and still sea's blaze:
Then stampede, scattering high and wide
A hail of stones and glittering tide.

I will walk the sunny wood,
Deep and tranquil as my mood,
And watch how the honeyed sunlight is
Hung in the great boughs of the trees,
And the pattern the branchwork weaves
Under the panoply of leaves,
And how high up two butterflies
Pass, vaulting, out into the skies.
Or, entering a silent glade,
Draw a sharp breath and stand dismayed
At beauty which doth straight present
Such a spasm of ravishment
Sight is confused, and doth confess
Her wreck in voiceless tenderness:
Seeing the flower-decked cherry-trees—
Unruffled ever by any breeze,
Unburned by bright dawn's fiery chill—
Standing celestially still....

Or lay me down 'neath chestnut boughs,
And drowse and dream and dream and drowse,
Drunk with the greenness overhead,
Until a blossom of sharp red,
Shook from her high and scalding place,
Splash with chill scent my upturned face.

But, lo! amid the woodland green
What mantles of strange blue are seen?
What sage is he who slowly leads
Disciples on and little heeds
The holiness of sylvan haunt,
Where even the silver bird dare chant
But seldom? where the sunlight lies
Here scalding gold, and yonder dies
Into a humid, still, green gloom?
Hath not he in the forum room
To vent himself, that now with rude
Rabble he scareth Solitude
From her ultimate hiding-place?
Now steps he forward a slow pace,
And 'gins his discourse. Hear him prate,
O woods, to silence consecrate;
Hear him, O flowers, whose golden eyes
Speak more than all Man's orat'ries!—

Philosopher. Meanwhile, though nations in distress
Cower at a comet's loveliness
Shaken across the midnight sky;
Though the wind roars, and Victory,
A virgin fierce, on vans of gold
Stoops through the cloud's white smother rolled
Over the armies' shock and flow
Across the broad green hills below,
Yet hovers and will not circle down
To cast t'ward one the leafy crown;
Though men drive galleys' golden beaks
To isles beyond the sunset peaks,
And cities on the sea behold
Whose walls are glass, whose gates are gold,
Whose turrets, risen in an hour,
Dazzle between the sun and shower,
Whose sole inhabitants are kings
Six cubits high with gryphon's wings
And beard and mien more glorious
Than Midas or Assaracus;
Though priests in many a hill-top fane
Lift anguished hands—and lift in vain—
Toward the sun's shaft dancing through
The bright roof's square of wind-swept blue;
Though 'cross the stars nightly arise
The silver fumes of sacrifice;
Though a new Helen bring new scars,
Pyres piled upon wrecked golden cars,
Stacked spears, rolled smoke, and spirits sped
Like a streaked flame toward the dead:
Though all these be, yet grows not old
Delight of sunned and windy wold,
Of soaking downs aglare, asteam,
Of still tarns where the yellow gleam
Of a far sunrise slowly breaks,
Or sunset strews with golden flakes
The deeps which soon the stars will throng.

For earth yet keeps her undersong
Of comfort and of ultimate peace,
That whoso seeks shall never cease
To hear at dawn or noon or night.
Joys hath she, too, joys thin and bright,
Too thin, too bright, for those to hear
Who listen with an eager ear,
Or course about and seek to spy,
Within an hour, eternity.
First must the spirit cast aside
This world's and next his own poor pride
And learn the universe to scan
More as a flower less as a man.
Then shall he hear the lonely dead
Sing and the stars sing overhead,
And every spray upon the heath
And larks above and ants beneath;
The stream shall take him in her arms;
Blue skies shall rest him in their calms;
The wind shall be a lovely friend,
And every leaf and bough shall bend
Over him with a lover's grace.
The hills shall bare a perfect face
Full of a high solemnity;
The heavenly clouds shall weep, and be
Content as overhead they swim
To be high brothers unto him.
No more shall he feel pitched and hurled
Uncomprehended into this world
For every place shall be his place,
And he shall recognize its face.
At dawn he shall upon his path;
No sword shall touch him, nor the wrath
Of the ranked crowd of clamorous men.
At even he shall home again,
And lay him down to sleep at ease,
One with the Night and the Night's peace.
Ev'n Sorrow, to be escaped of none,
But a more deep communion
Shall be to him, and Death at last
No more dreaded than the Past,
Whose shadow in the brain of earth
Informs him now and gave him birth.

Up, O Faun, up! is he a man
So dares affront the great god Pan?
Creep I now close....
(Has he not heard
Ever the lamb cry as the bird
Descends upon its helpless head
To pluck its eyes out? Blank with dread
Did he ne'er press in stumbling haste
Over the wide moor's tossing waste?
Or, stripped to plunge, did never eye
The sunned pool smiling treacherously,
Despair and terror in his heart?
Hate on him!)
See: he draws apart
That with himself he may commune
The while to a low murmuring tune
Wrung from a golden-stringëd lyre
The young men chant. Hist! Draws he nigher?

Now crouch I mid a thicket where
The spicy hedge-rose warms the air
With giddy scent, and for an hour
Woos with her open-bosomed flower
The full gaze of her lord the sun,
And through whose thorns the sunbeams run
Spangling the cavern of the brake
With chequered shade such as the snake
Loves to repose in, that the heat
Upon his sullen coils may beat,
Breeding within his ancient heart
Such malice that his tongue must dart
Flickering in silence out and in,
The while adown his withered skin,
From horns above his murderous eyes,
The cold surge shudders, ebbs, and dies.

And now yon comes, with solemn head
Sunk upon breast, with laurel spread
About his thought-bewrinkled brows.
All hail, philosopher! I rouse
Thee by a low and single hiss.
He is frozen still. A sudden bliss
Seizes me, and a branch I shake
As gently as an unseen snake
Swinging toward him.
But he stands,
Clasps and unclasps his gradual hands
In silence save for one long sigh
Of terror.
And I draw more nigh.
Beneath his glazèd eyes I sway
Three leaves upon one stilly spray:
He blenches.
Ha! it was well done,
That final hiss.
I am alone:
For with a harsh cry he has fled
Hideously stumbling, and is led
Speechless away.
The lyre, forgot,
Lies in the grass....

I know a spot
Where, to the sound of water sighing,
The Naiads, when the sun is lying
Heavy on mead and fronded tree,
When birds are silent and the bee
Swoons in the dewed heart of the rose,
Sing hushedly.
I will repose
Upon its banks and to the spring
An answer make with hands that cling
Over this lost lyre's murmurous chords
And with their voiced quiet mingle words
Such as my shrouded soul affords
When the warm blood within my veins
Throbs heavily, and the noon sun reigns,
Who would heaven and earth unite
In one blaze of arduous light,
Till dark woods, fields, bronzed sky, and deep,
In one maniac dull dream sleep.

The Naiads. Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep:
For our kisses lightlier run
Than the traceries of the sun
By the lolling water cast
Up grey precipices vast,
Lifting smooth and warm and steep
Out of the palely shimmering deep.

Come, ye sorrowful, and take
Kisses that are but half awake:
For here are eyes O softer far
Than the blossom of the star
Upon the mothy twilit waters,
And here are mouths whose gentle laughters
Are but the echoes of the deep
Laughing and murmuring in its sleep.

Come, ye sorrowful, and see
The raindrops flaming goldenly
On the stream's eddies overhead
And dragonflies with drops of red
In the crisp surface of each wing
Threading slant rains that flash and sing,
Or under the water-lily's cup,
From darkling depths, roll slowly up
The bronze flanks of an ancient bream
Into the hot sun's shattered beam,
Or over a sunk tree's bubbled bole
The perch stream in a golden shoal:
Come, ye sorrowful; our deep
Holds dreams lovelier than sleep.

But if ye sons of Sorrow come
Only wishing to be numb:
Our eyes are sad as bluebell posies,
Our breasts are soft as silken roses,
And our hands are tenderer
Than the breaths that scarce can stir
The sunlit eglantine that is
Murmurous with hidden bees.
Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep.

Come, ye sorrowful, for here
No voices sound but fond and clear
Of mouths as lorn as is the rose
That under water doth disclose,
Amid her crimson petals torn,
A heart as golden as the morn;
And here are tresses languorous
As the weeds wander over us,
And brows as holy and as bland
As the honey-coloured sand
Lying sun-entranced below
The lazy water's limpid flow:
Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep.

Sweet water-voices! now must I
Unto your sorrowings reply.
But hark! or ever there can sound
On the lull air the first profound
Few murmurs of my lyre's grave strings,
A voice uprises. Who now sings
The noon's and his own tristfulness?
A slim youth—in a shepherd's dress,
Yet without sheep—who careless lies
Upon the hill. His shepherd guise
Tokens, perhaps, a poet's heart
Which joys in wandering apart
From the dinned ways where chariots roll,
From the shrill sophist with his shoal
Of gapers, from the angry mart,
From the full eyes and empty heart
Of babbling women, from the neat
Aridity of paven street,
A heart that wandering, musing, sings
The joy, depth, pain of simple things:

The Youth. The earth is still; only the white sun climbs
Through the green silence of the branching limes,
Whose linked flowers hanging from the still tree-top
Distil their soundless syrup drop by drop,
While 'twixt the starry bracket of their lips
The black bee drowsing floats and drowsing sips.
The flimsy leaves hang on the bright blue air
Calm-suspended. Deep peace is everywhere
Filled with the murmurous rumour of high noon.
Earth seems with open eyes to sink and swoon.
In the sky peace: where nothing moves
Save the sun that smiles and loves.
A quivering peace is on the grass.
Through the noon gloam butterflies pass,
White and hot blue, only to where
They can float flat and dream on the soft air....
The trees are asleep, beautiful, slumbrous trees!
Stirred only by the passion of the breeze,
That, like a warm wave welling over rocks,
Loosens and lifts the mass of drowsing locks.
Earth, too, under the profound grass
Sleeps and sleeps, and softly heaves her slumbrous mass.
The earth sleeps. Sleeps the newly-buried clay
Or doth divinity trouble it to live alway?

No voice uplifts from under the rapt crust.
The dust cries to the unregarding dust.

Over the hill the stopped notes of twin reeds
Speak like drops from an old wound that bleeds:
A yokel's pipe an ancient pastoral sings
Above the innumerable murmur of hid wings.
I hear the cadence, sorrowful and sweet,
The oldest burthen of the earth repeat:
All love, all passion, all strife, all delight
Are but the dreams that haunt earth's visioned night.
In her eternal consciousness the stir
Of Alexander is no more to her
Than you or I: being all part of dreams,
The shadowiest shadow of a thing that seems,
The images the lone pipe-player sees,
Sitting and playing to the lone, noon breeze.
One note, one life!
They sleep: soon we as these!

Now plunge I into deepest woods,
Where everlastingly there broods
Such quiet and glamour as must be
Beneath the threshing upper sea.
Here burns no sun, but tawny light
Pervades the vistas still and bright
Of mazy boles and fallen leaves....
I press yet on. At length there cleaves
The twilit hush a pillared gleam.
The leafed floor rises. 'Tis a beam
Of sunlight fallen in a dell
Beyond the mound. There will I dwell,
Soothed by sunned quietude. For there
A carved rock spouts and moists the air
With gross-mouthed pour and rising spray....
But hark! what festive cries are they
Which greet me as I top the mound?
Below, dispersed and sunk around
The green and golden of the glen,
Lie satyrs; in a leafy den,
Silenus, crowned with vines and roses,
Drowses and starts, blinks, drinks, and dozes.
Banqueting dishes strew the grass,
Goblets of gold and peacock glass,
Flagons, urns, many a brimming bowl,
And horns from which the flushed fruits roll.
High o'er the feast a fronded ash
Hangs full of sunlight, and the splash
Of the spring's leap or gurgeing flow
Into the rippled pool below,
Where lilies rock, shakes up a bright
Eddy of golden tremulous light
Over the leaves. The Oread,
In a hooded lynx pelt clad,
Smiles where she lolls ... the while twin fauns
With stamping hooves and butting horns
Join combat for a dripping cup
She bears.
But now a shout goes up
At sight of me:

Satyr.             "We feast, we feast;
For, lo! the flaming sun hath ceased
To climb the curve of arid sky,
And his meridian holds on high,
Narrowing with his scorching beams
The chestnut's shade, exhausting streams,
Stilling the woodland singer's note,
Piercing the eyes, shrinking the throat,
Saddening the heart of man and beast.
Yet grieve not we but sprawl and feast.
Leap down, O Faun, then, from thy rocks,
Leap down to us. Bedew thy locks
With such cool spicy nards as dwell
Within this ribbed and rosy shell;
Around thy scalded temples twine
Sprays of this fountain-wetted vine,
And from this golden jorum sip
Nectarous liquor—ay, and lip
Smooth nectarines, thy sunk teeth clench
In melon dripping sherds, and quench
Thy salty thirst anew in flow
Of sparkled or dark wines that glow
With sober warmth and merriment,
Until our gladdened voices blent
Awake the vigour of our feet,
And up we start the grass to beat
With fervent foot, drink, dance again,
And, ever at the loud refrain
Clashing our cups, dance on and on,
Till the noontide lull is gone."

So join I them, and drink and sup,
And fill again the great bowl up;
And, drenched thus down, spin lusty tales
Of topping bouts 'twixt men and whales;
Of the East's Emperor who hath
A pool of wine to be his bath;
Of Hercules his thirst, and how
He did all Ethiopia plough,
And plant with vines, his thirst to sate.
We will discuss the Ideal State,
Whose sky is covered by a vine,
Whose hills are cheese, whose rivers wine,
Whose trees bear loaves brown, crisp and sweet,
Whose citizens do nought but eat,
But eat and drink, drink, eat, and snore,
And eat again, and wish no more
Than so to drink, snore, eat; who find
In this true liberty of mind
And true equality, in this
Fraternity, law, earthly bliss.
So swill again and yet again,
Till a fire flushes all the brain
And, trolling lustily and long,
Each hearty throat bursts into song.

Faun and Satyrs. Avaunt, mild-eyed Melancholy!
Welcome, Mirth and mænad Folly!
See about the lifted bowl,
Wrinkled on its bossy scroll,
Ribald nymphs and satyrs jolly
Tussle with a prancing goat;
While Silenus, kneeling, drolly
Proffers a dry bowl unto 't——
Ay, and round the mazer's brim
Boisterous Mermen shouting swim,
And each burly arm lifts up,
Wine that o'erbrims its conchëd cup;
Wherefore pour a triple potion:
If such can be dry in ocean,
'Tis as Titans we must sup!

Avaunt, brow and visage pious:
None but Bacchus boys come nigh us!
Raise the bowl and shout his name:
Io, Bacchus! for a flame
Chafes in our blood, O Bromios!
Fire no water e'er could quench,
And its heat must scorify us
If with wine we do not drench.
Wherefore overbrim the cup:
This to Jove now drink I up,
Who upon thy first of days
Snátched thee and cówed thy natal blaze,
Even as 'tis now the merry
Strength of this thy vintaged berry,
That the scorching danger stays.

To the vine now! let its golden
Leaves about our brows be folden.
To the swarthy hand that trims it!
To the grape! the sun that dims it!
To the pipe that doth embolden
Purpled stamping feet to riot
O'er the vatted winepress olden!
To the cavern's depth, chill, quiet!
Last to wine's own ruddy sprite,
Wakes in rheumy eyes a light—
Ay, and ripens youth to man;
Wine which more works than wisdom can;
Wine that welcomes hardy morrows;
Wine that turns to song our sorrows;
Wine the only magian!

Deep now! every bowl enhances
The world's beauty; see there dances
In the sky the leaping sun!
'Nay, can thine eye catch but one?'
'Six now spin.' 'A seventh advances,
Flares and vomits, swerves and blazes,
Now bursts and countlessly it prances,
Pulsing to my frantic paces!'
'I flame,—gyrate!' 'I shoot out heat!'
'My tricked speech trips, and trip my feet!'
'The earth runs round and heav'n is wheeling!'
'I sway; I reel.' 'Earth's wrecked and reeling!'
'Dance on.' 'Earth's gone.' 'All's white and clear!'
'Ah! Ah! Behind the blaze I hear
The Oread's laughter pealing!'

Avaunt, grief! Descend, O holy
Fierce Bacchic rapture, divine folly!

Forth from the forest wend I slowly,
While in my ears yet rings the holy
Dithyramb. The noon is past,
But the sun rages. There is cast
A dumbness yet o'er earth and sky.
Down to the river then will I,
Slowly about its depths to swim,
While the stream fondles every limb
And soothes its ache. Deep I will dip,
And, blowing, raise my locks, that drip
Till the slim Hyads troop to see,
And revel, too, and play with me,
Hanging my ears with humid weed
Or mounting me as water steed.
Then, musing I will on, and so
Stray to where a silver slow
River circles through the meads,
Wherein the mooching great ox feeds,
And turns a slow eye round the sky,
Wondering if he can ever die.
And there, mayhap, 'twill come to pass
I'll hear a sweet voice in the grass,
And yet shall mark no singer nigh,
Till, gently peering, I espy
A solemn, elfish child who sits
Unseen mid towering grass, and knits
An endless, endless daisy chain,
Crooning the while some soft refrain
Her mother sings her when she closes
Her twilit eyes.

Little Girl.       Three red, red, roses—
One each for father and mother, and one,
The reddest of all, for her baby son.
None for wee Amoret? Oh, none! for she
Some day, when she grows up, a red rose will be!

Then, crossed-legged mid the meadow-sweet,
I will sink down, laugh low, and greet
Her blue, inquiring, childish eyes
With mine, sharp, merry, brown, and wise,
And tell her tales—of Jack who slew
Ten giants; or Mirabel who flew
On a white owl to find the Prince
And give to him the Golden Quince
Would change him from a roaring bull
To a youth blithe and beautiful;
Or tales of the Goblin and the Sloth,
Who watched the moon and swore an oath
To find out what she was: how these
Explored her mines and found her—cheese.

Thus will I sit and both amuse
Until I rise and beg excuse:
Off 'to El Raschid in Assyria'
Or 'the Grand-Duchess of Illyria,'
Or 'to ask the maiden moon
Why one only of her shoon
She left us last night in the sky,
And not her silver self, and why
She always climbs the self-same track?
Lets no one ever see her back?'

But neither to the moon go I
Or to the river gliding by,
But to the woods, therein to move
Among the quiet glades I love,
Desiring nought but aye to see
The beech, ash, oak, and chestnut tree....
Till I a nymph meet who persuades
Me to the broadest of the glades,
Around whose smooth and sunken space
The far woods lie. For in this place,
Deserted but for a mid-grove
Of maiden trees, bower of the dove,
Pan plays, and should the sylvans chance,
Nymphs, fauns, and sylvans, join in dance.

On either hand the slender trees
Bow to the caressing breeze,
And shake their shocks of silver light
Against skies marbled greenish-white,
Save where, within a rent of blue,
The tilted slip of moon glints through,
Glittering upon us as we dance
With a soft extravagance
Of limbs as blonde as autumn boughs,
And gold locks floating from moony brows.
While anguished Pan the pipes doth blow
Fond and tremulous and low,
And anon the timbrel shakes.
—It is his sudden heart that breaks
For springs before the world grew old,
Rich vales, and hill-tops fiery cold!—
He watches the scarce moving skies,
The trees, the glittering revelries,
The moon, the dancers lemon-clad:
The world fantastical and sad.

The high-flung timbrels pulse and knock;
We follow in a dancing flock,
Touching each other's finger-tips,
While from between our parted lips
The solemn melodies repeat
The rhythm of our shaken feet.
Then faster! and the round we trace,
Hair flowing from elated face,
Eyes lit, breast bare, with lifted knees,
And hands that toss as toss the trees....
And slow again ... with cumulate motion,
As the long draw and plunge of ocean
Bursting in a cloud of spray
Up a white, deserted bay
Of the sun-circled green Bermooths,
Whose blistering sands the cool foam soothes....
Next the bewildering pipes may sing
Some simple melody of spring,
Whose cadences remember yet
Sadly lost springs that we forget.
To which as dances April rain
On a still pool where leans no stain,
Save of the cloud's pure splendour spread
Gloriously overhead,
Our fast-flickering feet shall twinkle,
And our golden anklets tinkle,
While fair arms in aery sleeves
Shiver as the poplar's leaves.

And all the while shall Pan sit by
And play, and pause, perhaps, to sigh,
Viewing the scarce-moving skies,
The hushed and glittering revelries,
The infant moon, the slender trees
Silvering to the shivery breeze,
The fair, lorn dancers lemon-clad:
The world fantastical and sad.

Thus may we dance the light away
Of yet one more unmemoried day.
But, the dance ended, I will go
Beyond the reach of pipes that blow
A sadness thrilling through my veins....

For now within my spirit reigns
Shadow: before whose brooding face,
Silent, there trail on gliding pace
A multitude of restless Fears,
Obscure Griefs and obscurer Tears,
Bewildered Sighs, waned Phantasies,
And all disastrous Presences,
Mutely prophetic of a Woe
I know not yet, but I shall know.

Such power Pan's grief hath to oppress,
And Memory!—since now I guess
Only too well that there must come
Twilight, Calamity, and Doom.

For once I saw beneath an oak
A bard so aged it seemed he woke
That moment from a sleep of years
And in his voice were sleep and tears....
Till, wide-eyed, he, raging, spake,
Rocking as when woodlands shake
Under the first urge of the wind,
Whose roaring murk lightens behind.