PAN-WORSHIP
AND OTHER POEMS

PAN-WORSHIP
AND OTHER POEMS

BY
ELEANOR FARJEON
LONDON
ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET, W.
1908

TO MY FATHER

CONTENTS

PAN-WORSHIP

In Arcady there lies a crystal spring

Ring'd all about with green melodious reeds

Swaying seal'd music up and down the wind.

Here on its time-defacèd pedestal

The image of a half-forgotten God

Crumbles to its complete oblivion.

The faithful and invariable earth

Tilts at the shrine her sacrificial cup,

Spilling libations from the brim that runs

The golden nectar of her daffodils

And rivulets of summer-breathing flow'rs.

O evanescent temples built of man

To deities he honoured and dethroned!

Earth shoots a trail of her eternal vine

To crown the head that men have ceased to honour.

Beneath the coronal of leaf and lichen

The mocking smile upon the lips derides

Pan's lost dominion; but the pointed ears

Are keen and prick'd with old remember'd sounds.

All my breast aches with longing for the past!

Thou God of stone, I have a craving in me

For knowledge of thee as thou wert in old

Enchanted twilights in Arcadia.

Arcadia! it is the very music

Of the first spring-tide rippling its first wave

Over the naked, laughing baby world ...

Come again, thou sparkling spring-tide, come again,

Rush in and flood this autumn from my soul!

These waters welling at a dead God's shrine,

These happy waters bubbling limpid kisses,

Even with such bright and eager lips made wet

The hem of the earth's garment in the days

When earth was youthful and the Gods of Greece

In starry constellation crowned Olympus.

What drifting mists have veil'd the Olympian fires?

What of the Gods of Greece? and what of Greece?

O virgin Greece, standing with naked feet

In the morning dews of the world against the light

Of an infant dawn! old Greece, ever-young Greece,

The pagan in my blood, the instinct in me

That yearns back, back to nature-worship, cries

Aloud to thee! I would stoop to kiss those feet,

Sweet white wet feet washed with the earth's first dews:—

And leaning ear to grass I would re-catch

Echoes of footsteps sounding down dim ages

For ever the music once they made on thee:

The flaming step of the young Apollo when,

With limbs like light and golden locks toss'd back

On a smooth ivory shoulder, he avenged

His mother's wrongs on Python: the dreaming step

Of Hylas in the woods of Mysia

Leading to sleep beneath sweet sylvan waters:

The laughing step of untrammell'd Atalanta

Spurning the ground before her golden capture:

Child-Proserpina stepping like a flower,

And the singing step of Syrinx fleeing—what?

If thou couldst speak, neglected, sneering stone,

Thou wouldst know how to answer me. Wilt thou

Not speak?... How still it is!... The noise of the world

Is shut about with silence!... If I kneel,

Bend and adore, make sacrifice to thee,

If to thy long-deserted fane I bring

Tribute of milk and honey—then if I snap

That loveliest pipe of all at the spring's margin

And let the song of Syrinx from its hollow,

Nay, even the nymph's sweet self—O Pan, old Pan,

Shall I not see thee stirring in the stone,

Crack thy confinement, leap forth—be again?

I can believe it, master of bright streams,

Lord of green woodlands, king of sun-spread plains

And star-splashed hills and valleys drenched in moonlight!

And I shall see again a dance of Dryads

And airy shapes of Oreads circling free

To shy sweet pipings of fantastic fauns

And lustier-breathing satyrs ... God of Nature,

Thrice hailing thee by name with boisterous lungs

I will thrill thee back from the dead ages, thus:

Pan! Pan! O Pan! bring back thy reign again

Upon the earth!...

Numb pointed ears, ye hear

Only the wash and whisper of far waters,

The pale green waters of thin distant Springs

Under the pale green light of distant moons

Washing upon the shores of the old, old world

With a foam of flowers, a foam of whispering flowers....

VAGRANT SONGS

I

But yesterday the winds of March

Bent back the barren branches of the larch ...

But O! to-day

The bareness from the earth is swept away.

Deep through my swelling breast I hear

The wild call of the gipsy time o' year—

O, Vagrant Spring,

Brother o' mine, I'm for the gipsying!

The greening earth I stand upon

Tingles my feet: Brother, we must begone!

Younger and younger,

All my heart cries aloud with Wander-Hunger

II

Of troubles know I none,

Of pleasures know I many—

I rove beneath the sun

Without a single penny.

A king might envy long

The fare my board adorning—

Upon a throstle's song

I broke my fast this morning;

My lunch, a girl's quick smile,

As I'm a living sinner;

She walked with me a mile ...

I kissed her for my dinner.

Of troubles know I none,

Of pleasures know I many—

I fare beneath the sun

Without a single penny!

III

O, how she laughs with me,

Eats with me, quaffs with me,

Smiles to me, sighs to me,

Questions, replies to me,

Answers my every mood,

Finds good what I find good,

Earth, the green Mother!

Where shall man live and die

Having my treasury

Which never gold could buy—

Water and air and sky

And Earth's great sympathy—

Save he do live as I?

Join with me, Brother!

If you be sickening

Here's for your quickening!

Here at the heart of it

You shall be part of it,

And the good smell of rain

Shall make you whole again—

Join with me, Brother!

Here the life-sap runs green,

Here the life-ways are clean,

Here just one bird that sings

Re-starts your sluggish springs,

Here under moon and sun

You, I and She are one,

Earth, the green Mother!

IV

I lay me on the ground

Under the dark,

And Heaven's purple arc

Drew its deep curtains round

My weary head and shut away the sound.

The golden star-lights crept

Over the hill ...

I lay so very still

I heard them as they stepped ...

"Sleep!" breathed the Earth. Upon her breast I slept.

V

I'll stay one night beneath your roof,

And longer I will stay for no man,

And as for love, I'm loving-proof—

Turn by your eyes, White Woman.

The Wander-fever's in my blood,

I have no time for simple loving—

The hot Earth is in roving mood,

And I too must be roving.

If I should love you ... soon, ah, soon

I'd break your heart to go a-roaming,

And chasing shadows of the moon

Think never once of homing.

Why will you wring my breast with tears?

Tears will not quench the Wander-fever.

Why will you fill my soul with fears

When I will go for ever?

I whom the Earth's green passions move

Have put away all passions human ...

I will not love!... I dare not love ...

Turn by your eyes, White Woman.

VI

I went far and cold

Over upland wold

Where the story of spring's breathing

Scarcely yet was told.

Shifting monotone

Of the pale wind's moan

Through my hair at dusk went wreathing,

And I walked alone.

Far below and far

Where the homesteads are

One small ruddy candle twinkled,

Warmer than a star.

When the day was gone,

Softly one by one

Homing-lights the valley sprinkled ...

And I wandered on.

KING LAURIN'S GARDEN

(A Styrian Peasant-Girl Dreams at her Wheel)

King Laurin has a garden of roses

Where warm sweet odours do idly flow

Wave upon wave through the charmèd air ...

It is sin to wish for the garden of roses

In the heart of wild mountains where no men go.

Laurin is king of a rosy garden.

The lure of the roses is rare, O rare!

They tremble and brighten and throb and glow ...

I may not think of King Laurin's garden.

A danger, they tell me, for maids is there.

There are four high gates to the garden of roses,

For the treasure of bloom a golden guard,

A precious cup for the rose-wine red.

O the golden gates of the garden of roses!

They are bright and beautiful, tall and barred.

There is no strong wall round the rosy garden;

From gate to gate runs a woven thread,

Yellow and silken and fine, for ward.

Who snaps the ward of the rosy garden

With his hand and his foot shall he pay, 'tis said.

Laurin who rules the garden of roses

Is an elf-king, therefore he has no soul.

(The good priest shudders at Laurin's name.)

Poor soulless elf of the garden of roses!

Shall I pray for King Laurin at Vesper-toll?

They say no prayers in the rosy garden

Where life is the flash of a fragrant flame

Like the heart of a flower on fire: the whole

Of forbidden sweet is the rosy garden

I may not think of and feel no shame.

For in King Laurin's garden of roses

Waking thought shall be stilled asleep,

And the still heart dream itself half-awake ...

O the soft, soft dreams of the garden of roses!

They creep ... (I look not) ... but they steal and creep.

Laurin the king of the rosy garden

Has a magic girdle that none can break.

It makes the pulse of his life to leap

With twelve men's strength. In the rosy garden

He is feared and feared for the girdle's sake.

Laurin the king of the garden of roses

Has a magic crown where strange birds so sing

That resistance and doubt by their song once kissed

Melt into trance. In the garden of roses

He is loved and loved for his crowned bird-ring.

Laurin the king of the rosy garden

Has a magic cloak the colour of mist,

And he goes invisibly wandering

Far from the bourne of the rosy garden

Like a cloud of pearl and of amethyst.

He seeks a bride for his garden of roses,

For the soulless spirit a human girl ...

(The priest bids me wear my cross and pray) ...

He will bear her back to his garden of roses

In the mist of his magic grey-and-pearl.

Kunhild was borne to the rosy garden,

The sister of Dietrich of Bern, one day.

A fair green mead and a cloud's dim swirl,

And Kunhild awoke in the rosy garden ...

But she stood by a linden-tree first, they say.

* * * * *

King Laurin has a garden of roses

Full of warm odours ... I'll sit and spin

As my Mother bids me ... O wine-red glow

Of half-waked dreams in the garden of roses ...

Spin, wheel!... fine thread, bright like silk, and thin.

A grey mist steals from the rosy garden

In the heart of wild mountains where no men go ...

To think of the garden they say is sin—

I'll dream no more of King Laurin's garden ...

See! in our meadow green lindens grow....

THE MYSTERIOUS FOREST

I stood on the verge of the mysterious forest,

Sunlight lay behind me on the meadows,

But all the world of the mysterious forest

Was a world of wraiths and shadows.

The dim trees beckoned, beckoned with their branches,

I said: "The sun's behind me on the meadows."

A dim voice calling, calling through the branches

From the world of wraiths and shadows.

I saw a pale young Queen, her eyes were mournful,