English

I wander forth. About my feet
The sward is fresh and doubly sweet
The loved air on my salvid 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

Forth from the forest wend I slowly,
While in my ears yet rings the holy
Dithyramb. The noon is past,
But the sun rages. There is cast
A dumbness yet o'er earth and sky.
Down to the river then will I,
Slowly about its depths to swim,
While the stream fondles every limb
And soothes its ache. Deep I will dip,
And, blowing, raise my locks, that drip
Till the slim Hyads troop to see,
And revel, too, and play with me,
Hanging my ears with humid weed
Or mounting me as water steed.
Then, musing I will on, and so

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

The Naiads . Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep:
For our kisses lightlier run
Than the traceries of the sun
By the lolling water cast
Up grey precipices vast,
Lifting smooth and warm and steep
Out of the palely shimmering deep.

Come, ye sorrowful, and take
Kisses that are but half awake:
For here are eyes O softer far
Than the blossom of the star
Upon the mothy twilit waters,
And here are mouths whose gentle laughters.

I know a spot
Where, to the sound of water sighing,
The Naiads, when the sun is lying
Heavy on mead and fronded tree,
When birds are silent and the bee
Swoons in the dewed heart of the rose,
Sing hushedly.
I will repose
Upon its banks and to the spring
An answer make with hands that cling
Over this lost lyre's murmurous chords
And with their voiced quiet mingle words
Such as my shrouded soul affords
When the warm blood within my veins
Throbs heavily, and the noon sun reigns,

But, lo! amid the woodland green
What mantles of strange blue are seen?
What sage is he who slowly leads
Disciples on and little heeds
The holiness of sylvan haunt,
Where even the silver bird dare chant
But seldom? where the sunlight lies
Here scalding gold, and yonder dies
Into a humid, still, green gloom?
Hath not he in the forum room
To vent himself, that now with rude
Rabble he scareth Solitude
From her ultimate hiding-place?
Now steps he forward a slow pace,
And 'gins his discourse. Hear him prate,

So to a thorny thicket dense
With rosy-coloured may-bloom, whence
I can hear a torrent rumble,
And, peering forth, behold it tumble
Cumbrously into a pool whose white
Tumult sears the giddied sight.
There, half dozed, silent, smile to hear
A babble of voices drawing near,
Spy many a boy and laughing lass
Racing hands-linked across the grass.

Boys and Girls . Now has the blue-eyed Spring
Sped dancing through the plain.

Beyond the rocks, below the trees,
The great downs lie; nought but the breeze
Is heard upon them. All day long
The shadows of the great clouds throng
Across their sides: a noiseless rout.
Sometimes a peewit, blown about
By airy surge, cries a lone cry
Ere hurtled down the clarid sky;
Sometimes is heard a shepherd's voice
Shouting, and after it the noise
Of many-pattering crowded sheep
Herded within the gay dog's keep,
Who also, barking, shouts. Save these
Nought breaks the breezy silences

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 ruggid 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

Centaur . Up! the ag'd centaurs lie yet sleeping,
While crouch I palled of this cavern lair
And watch the stretched sea-eagle sweeping
Down the grey-blue drizzling air.
The sea-nymphs, too, will now be waking,
If sickle-eyed they have not played
Across the moonlight sets me aching,
Longing and slinking, half afraid,
Down the feathery, tawny sand
On sighing tread
Deep into banks of glistering shell,
To halt in dread
Lest my hoof-scrunch break the spell
Of the syren-chants that swell