I wander forth. About my feet
The sward is fresh and doubly sweet
The loved air on my salvëd brow.
Be still. Be still. For hearken: now
A second voice behind the grove
Uprises tremulous with love.
How hushed, how moody is the strain!
Pleading—O, surely, not in vain!
Sombrely rises every note,
Lingers, and in dark dells remote
Echoes until another come.
Philomel herself falls dumb.
Philomel herself falls dumb,
Mindful of her shadowy home;
Of a slowly falling surge
Sounding its unending dirge
On an alien ocean's verge;
Of a rain-smitten tower that stood
Fronting the calm, pale rolling flood;
Of a slim sister's beauty glows,
Fatefuller than a midnight rose;
Of the birth, growth, and scheming dire,
Of an accursëd King's desire;
Of night-long vigil, tongueless wrack,
And the last exultation black
O'er loathly offering, feasting sour,
A fell cry in the lonely tower,
Raging pursuit, flight's vain endeavour,
And Vengeance stilling all for ever.—
Save the voice that nightly cries
To the slowly wheeling skies
Of unrest resolved in calm,
Time's tears fallen like a balm,
Sorrows that dead hearts have wrung,
By the sad Enthusiast sung,
Sweeter than Euphrosyne's tongue.
O tremulous voice! who is 't that shakes
The night with fervour?
Through the brakes
Softly I thread ... emerge, and now
Across the rising meadow's brow
I glimpse, beside the farther wood,
Under the shadow of its hood,
A glimmering shape that does not move.
It is the shepherd and his love:
Close, close they stand, swooning and dim;
Her shadowed face looks up at him,
Her sighing breath his forehead warms;
He sings, she leans within his arms.
THE SHEPHERD'S NIGHT SONG.
The Shepherd. Now arched dark boughs hang dim and still;
The deep dew glistens up the hill;
Silence trembles. All is still.
Now the sweet siren of the woods,
Philomel, passionately broods,
Or, darkling, hymns love's wildest moods.
Danaë, fainting in her tower,
Feels a sudden sun swim lower,
Gasps beneath the starry shower.
Venus in the pomegranate grove
Flutters like a fluttering dove
Under young Adonis' love.
Leda longs until alight
In the reeds those wings of white
She hears beat the upper night.