APOLLO AND MARSYAS.
MARSYAS.
Low, but far heard,
Across the Phrygian forest goes a sound
That seems to hush the pines that moan all round.
Is it the weird
Wail of a she-wolf plundered of her own?
Or some maimed Satyr left to die alone?
Or has great Pan, in lonely places feared,
To some belated wretch his wild face shown?
Oh strong rough Pan,
God of lone spots where sudden awe o’erwhelms
Weak souls, but never mine—I love thy realms!
I love the wan
Half-leafless glens, which Autumn’s plaint repeat
From tree to tree; I love the shy fawn’s bleat;
The cry of lynx and wood-cat safe from man;
The fox’s short sharp bark from sure retreat.
The deep lone woods
Which men call silent teem with voice: I hear
Vague wails, low calls, weird notes, now far, now near.
The storm-born floods
That sweep the glens, the gurgling hurrying springs
Impart dim secrets, vague prophetic things;
The whispering winds awake strange wistful moods.
But hush, my flute! Apollo, strike thy strings!
APOLLO.
The harvest-hymns
Rise from the fields, where, in the setting sun,
The reapers stretch by sheaves of golden dun
Their weary limbs;
While many a sunburnt lad or maiden weaves
With every corn-flower that the sickle leaves
Demeter’s harvest-crowns, or binds and trims
For the Great Mother her allotted sheaves.
The whole west glows
Like a vast sea of rosy molten ore
Where, here and there, great tracks of pearly shore
Or gleaming rows
Of crimson reefs and isles of amber blaze;
And through the whole a mighty fan of rays
Spreads as the sun approaches earth and throws
A farewell glance before he goes his ways.
A rich warm scent
Of summer ripeness fills the fertile plain;
The ox, unyoked, kneels chewing near the wain;
In one sound blent
The voices of the insect-swarms that fill
Each furrow, indefatigably trill
And chirp and hum; until the bright day spent,
Invokes the dusk to make the lone fields still.
MARSYAS.