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!
III
The Faun hails the Centaur.
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.
Of the Centaur's Beauty.
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——