Classic Poem

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,
And thither often would I, piping, stray
To listen to the music of a fount
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 shore to shore,
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.