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:
MIDDAY IN ARCADIA.
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!
XIV
Of the Satyrs' Feast.
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:
The Invitation.
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."