With Love that holds in one
Sacred and ancient bond
The sun
And all the vast beyond,
And Beauty to enthrall
The soul of man to heaven:
Yea, all
These gifts to him were given.
Yet in his dream's desire
He drowsed away the hours:
His lyre
Lay buried in the flowers.
Then in his wrath arose
Apollo, lord of light,
That shows
The wrong deed from the right;
And by what radiant laws
O'erruling human needs,
The cause
To consequence proceeds;
How balanced is the sway
He gives each mortal doom:
How day
Demands the atoning gloom:
How all good things await
The soul that pays the price
To Fate
By equal sacrifice;
And how on him that sleeps
For less than labour's sake
There creeps
Uncharmed, the Pythian snake.
III
Lulled by the wash of the feathery grasses, a sea with many a sun-swept billow,
Heart to heart in the heart of the summer, lover by lover asleep they lay,
Hearing only the whirring cicala that chirruped awhile at their poppied pillow
Faint and sweet as the murmur of men that laboured in villages far away.