Out of his hand the lyre
Suddenly slipped and fell,
The fire
Acclaimed it into hell.
The night grew dark again:
There came a bitter cry
Of pain,
Oh Love, once more I die!
And lo, the earth-dawn broke,
And like a wraith she fled:
He woke
Alone: his love was dead.
He woke on earth: the day
Shone coldly: at his side
There lay
The body of his bride.
VII
Only now when the purple vintage bubbles and winks in the autumn glory,
Only now when the great white oxen drag the weight of the harvest home,
Sunburnt labourers, under the star of the sunset, sing as an old-world story
How two pale and thwarted lovers ever through Arcady still must roam.
Faint as the silvery mists of morning over the peaks that the noonday parches,
On through the haunts of the gloaming musk-rose, down to the rivers that glisten below,
Ever they wander from meadow to pinewood, under the whispering woodbine arches,
Faint as the mists of the dews of the dusk when violets dream and the moon-winds blow.
Though the golden lute of Orpheus gathered the splendours of earth and heaven,
All the golden greenwood notes and all the chimes of the changing sea,
Old men over the fires of winter murmur again that he was not given
The steadfast heart divine to rule that infinite freedom of harmony.
Therefore he failed, say they; but we, that have no wisdom, can only remember
How through the purple perfumed pinewoods white Eurydice roamed and sung:
How through the whispering gold of the wheat, where the poppy burned like a crimson ember,
Down to the valley in beauty she came, and under her feet the flowers upsprung.
Down to the valley she came, for far and far below in the dreaming meadows
Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name;
So she arose from her home in the hills, and down through the blossoms that danced with their shadows,
Out of the blue of the dreaming distance, down to the heart of her lover she came.