Ardours and Endurances Part 12

But neither to the moon go I Or to the river gliding by, But to the woods, therein to move Among the quiet glades I love, Desiring nought but aye to see The beech, ash, oak, and chestnut tree....

Till I a nymph meet who persuades Me to the broadest of the glades, Around whose smooth and sunken s.p.a.ce The far woods lie. For in this place, Deserted but for a mid-grove Of maiden trees, bower of the dove, Pan plays, and should the sylvans chance, Nymphs, fauns, and sylvans, join in dance.

XVII

On either hand the slender trees _Of the Immortal Bow to the caressing breeze, Dance._ And shake their shocks of silver light Against skies marbled greenish-white, Save where, within a rent of blue, The tilted slip of moon glints through, Glittering upon us as we dance With a soft extravagance Of limbs as blonde as autumn boughs, And gold locks floating from moony brows.

While anguished Pan the pipes doth blow Fond and tremulous and low, And anon the timbrel shakes.

--It is his sudden heart that breaks For springs before the world grew old, Rich vales, and hill-tops fiery cold!-- He watches the scarce moving skies, The trees, the glittering revelries, The moon, the dancers lemon-clad: The world fantastical and sad.

The high-flung timbrels pulse and knock; We follow in a dancing flock, Touching each other's finger-tips, While from between our parted lips The solemn melodies repeat The rhythm of our shaken feet.

Then faster! and the round we trace, Hair flowing from elated face, Eyes lit, breast bare, with lifted knees, And hands that toss as toss the trees....

And slow again ... with c.u.mulate motion, As the long draw and plunge of ocean Bursting in a cloud of spray Up a white, deserted bay Of the sun-circled green Bermooths, Whose blistering sands the cool foam soothes....

Next the bewildering pipes may sing Some simple melody of spring, Whose cadences remember yet Sadly lost springs that we forget.

To which as dances April rain On a still pool where leans no stain, Save of the cloud's pure splendour spread Gloriously overhead, Our fast-flickering feet shall twinkle, And our golden anklets tinkle, While fair arms in aery sleeves s.h.i.+ver as the poplar's leaves.

And all the while shall Pan sit by And play, and pause, perhaps, to sigh, Viewing the scarce-moving skies, The hushed and glittering revelries, The infant moon, the slender trees Silvering to the s.h.i.+very breeze, The fair, lorn dancers lemon-clad: The world fantastical and sad.

XVIII

Thus may we dance the light away Of yet one more unmemoried day.

But, the dance ended, I will go Beyond the reach of pipes that blow A sadness thrilling through my veins....

For now within my spirit reigns _The Faun's Shadow: before whose brooding face, Sadness._ Silent, there trail on gliding pace A mult.i.tude of restless Fears, Obscure Griefs and obscurer Tears, Bewildered Sighs, waned Phantasies, And all disastrous Presences, Mutely prophetic of a Woe I know not yet, but I shall know.

Such power Pan's grief hath to oppress, And Memory!--since now I guess Only too well that there must come Twilight, Calamity, and Doom.

For once I saw beneath an oak A bard so aged it seemed he woke That moment from a sleep of years And in his voice were sleep and tears....

Till, wide-eyed, he, raging, spake, Rocking as when woodlands shake Under the first urge of the wind, Whose roaring murk lightens behind.

_Prophetic Bard._ "Be warned! I feel the world grow old, And off Olympus fades the gold _The Of the simple pa.s.sionate sun; Prophecy._ And the G.o.ds wither one by one: Proud-eyed Apollo's bow is broken, And throned Zeus nods nor may be woken But by the song of spirits seven Quiring in the midnight heaven Of a new world no more forlorn, Sith unto it a Babe is born, That in a propped, thatched stable lies, While with darkling, reverend eyes Dusky Emperors, coifed in gold, Kneel mid the rushy mire, and hold Caskets of rubies, urns of myrrh, Whose fumes enwrap the thurifer And coil toward the high dim rafters Where, with lutes and warbling laughters, Cl.u.s.tered cherubs of rainbow feather, Fanning the fragrant air together, Flit in jubilant holy glee, And make heavenly minstrelsy To the Child their Sun, whose glow Bathes them His cloudlets from below....

Long shall this chimed accord be heard, Yet all earth hushed at His first word: Then shall be seen Apollo's car Blaze headlong like a banished star; And the Queen of heavenly Loves Dragged downward by her dying doves; Vulcan, spun on a wheel, shall track The circle of the zodiac; Silver Artemis be lost, To the polar blizzards tossed; Heaven shall curdle as with blood; The sun be swallowed in the flood; The universe be silent save For the low drone of winds that lave The shadowed great world's ashen sides As through the rustling void she glides.

Then shall there be a whisper heard Of the Grave's Secret and its Word, Where in black silence none shall cry Save those who, dead-affrighted, spy How from the murmurous graveyards creep The figures of eternal sleep.

Last: when 'tis light men shall behold, Beyond the crags, a flower of gold Blossoming in a golden haze, And, while they guess Zeus' halls now blaze Shall in the blossom's heart descry The saints of a new hierarchy!"

He ceased ... and in the morning sky Zeus' anger threatened murmurously.

I sped away. The lightning's sword Stabbed on the forest. But the word Abides with me. I feel its power Most darkly in the twilit hour, When Night's eternal shadow, cast Over earth hushed and pale and vast, Darkly foretells the soundless Night In which this...o...b.. so green, so bright, Now spins, and which shall compa.s.s her When on her rondure nought shall stir But snow-whorls which the wind shall roll From the Equator to the Pole....

For everlastingly there is _Of the Final Something Beyond, Behind: I wis Nature of Pan._ All G.o.ds are haunted, and there clings, As hound behind fled sheep, the things Beyond the Universe's ken: G.o.ds haunt the Half-G.o.ds, Half-G.o.ds men, And Man the brute. G.o.ds, born of Night, Feel a blacker appet.i.te Gape to devour them; Half-G.o.ds dread But jealous G.o.ds; and mere men tread Warily lest a Half-G.o.d rise And loose on them from empty skies Amazement, thunder, stark affright, Famine and sudden War's thick night, In which loud Furies hunt the Pities Through smoke above wrecked, flaming cities.

For Pan, the Unknown G.o.d, rules all.

He shall outlive the funeral, Change, and decay, of many G.o.ds, Until he, too, lets fall his rods Of viewless power upon that minute When Universe cowers at Infinite!

XIX

So far my mind runs, yet I see How little faun-philosophy Repays my heart would learn, not teach....

Better laugh long, lie, suck a peach Couched under tiger-lily flowers Which daze the low hot sun with showers Of fragrance, while the dusty bee Drones, fumbles, falls luxuriantly Within their throats; couched, turn a song Of flowers all the flowers among:

There is a vale beyond blue Ida's mount, THE FAUN'S And thither often would I, piping, stray AFTERNOON To listen to the music of a fount SONG.

That spelt her tears out in a Dorian lay.

"Long, long ago," she wept, "Narcissus came Wandering down the sunny-shafted glade; Full weary was he of the lamp's gold flame Wavering beneath the dusky colonnade.

"For at the fall of night forth from the dim Gardens stole Echo; kneeling by his bed, With small sweet love-words she importuned him Who watched the lamp flame idle overhead.

"Dry was her hot flushed cheek and dark the fire In her great eyes; her lips roamed warm and light Over his arm; her murmurs of desire Mixed with the many murmurs of the night.

"In vain! He came to rest and sing with me And loll his fingers in the liquid cool, And drop slow tears, slow tears luxuriously Into the shadowy motion of the pool.

"With tongue scarce audible I wooed the lad, Whispering how beneath the drumming fall Slumbers a rapt, deep lake, so blue, so sad, That no fish swim it, nor about it call

"Delighting birds from green-bowered sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, Nor doth the nightingale, when June begins And the moon mounts a pattin of bright or, Hymn her long sorrows and her lord's black sins.

"And the boy answered, answered me, and mourned The loveliness of Echo. 'Yet,' sighed he, 'My soul is fled, and long, thou knowest, bourned In what far dell none knoweth, love, but thee

"'Who farest thither! Sweeter to my ears Are thy quiet voices and the gentle breast Of rambling water sweeter than my dear's.'

Then murmured I, 'Lean lower, love, and rest.'

"There was no sound through all the sleeping wood, Save one sharp cry from Echo, open-lipped, Who, as she followed, from afar did spy How to my arms my lover downward slipped.

"Softly I rocked him down into the pool, Shutting his ears to the loud torrents' din, And kissed and bore him through the portals cool, And laid him sleeping the blue halls within.

"So I returned; but never to me came Another as beautiful, nor shall come.

Lonely I flow, and, flowing, lisp his name, Till the sky waste and all the earth be dumb."

So sang the spring, and, answering my look, Through the dark wood from the spring's fountain-head Flock upon flock of eyed narcissi shook, And the brook wept in sorrow for the dead.

Ah, Death again! nothing can fend Us from the Sibyl of the End, Whose delight 'tis to find new forms, Now in dull sighs, anon in storms, Singing, and ever of the same: The trusting heart betrayed; the flame Whirled in a night on cities proud; Lightnings from skies undimmed by cloud; The wide grave yawned before swift feet; The small success that brings defeat; The smiling lips and deadly eyes Of Destiny walking in disguise.

XX

But now the sun sinks I will go _Of the Whither two full streams meet and flow, Evening River._ Murmuring as in wedded sleep Through evening meadows dim and deep.

There will I watch the slow trout rise At the myriad simmering flies, And listen to the water flowing With such faint sounds there is no knowing Whether its spirit laughs or weeps Among the dreams wherein it sleeps.

Sunken amid the twilight gra.s.s, I will watch the water pa.s.s, Weaving ever dimmer tales And dimmer as the evening pales....

Till from the calm the silent lark Drops to the meadows hushed and dark, While in the stagnant silver west, Above the tranquil poplars' crest, There glimmers through the murky bar The slowly climbing Hesperal Star.

Thus brooding by the hazy stream, I shall hear the water dream Tinkily on, and I shall see, As my eyes close quietly.

Into a soft and long repose, The lone star like a silver rose Fade with me on the drifting stream Into the quiet night of dream.

Yet sleep I not; for lo! there wakes _Of Night's From the dim water-meadow brakes Rhapsodist._ A quiring: voice as if a star, Fallen to earth from midnight far Beyond the haze of highest cloud, Bewailed her erred path aloud.

It is the nightingale who sings, Fanning soft air with whirred wings, Probing the dark with jewelled eyes.

How oft, how sad, how loud she cries!

And all the echoes answer her; The night airs through the close wood stir The stars that through the eddies climb Glitter; the silver waters chime; The lily bows her dewy head....

I, too, a sudden tear have shed.