Classic Poem

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
From the dim shoals toward the land.

But this morn the breeze is blowing
Freshly: I hear lightly flowing
From the bending giant beam
Bars the forehead of our door
The golden raindrops in a stream
Pattering on the steamy floor.

Faun . It is the Centaur's voice I hear!
Young and lusty, deep and clear:
And the Panisks at his voice
In their fastnesses rejoice,
Emerging from the creviced crag
Or cave beneath the mountain's jag,
Merry, shaggy, light of hoof,
To run along the narrow roof,
And upon the shelved height
Dance before the swimming light.

Centaur . And I see upon the ledge,
Astir over the hanging edge,
A russet briar cold with dew
And beyond, forlornly pent
In a grey cloud's gliding rent,
A pure pool of the brightest blue:
So near it seems I've but to cast
A flint out on the forward vast
To mark it flashing blithely through!

And now at last!
At last
The great Sun,
The Sudden One,
Stamps upon the cloudy floor;
The heavens are split, and through the floor
Heaven's golden treasures tumbling pour. . . .
And the Sun himself, divine,
Doth descend
In such a bursting blaze of shine
That his glorious hair is shook
Over the wide world's craggiest end!
And, even I, I dare not look.

*****

I will shout! I will ramp!
Just three bounds: then out and stamp
Where the air like water is
Eddying up over the precipice; —
Wind with an edge to it, sea-damp,
Blowing from the canyon's race
Where the dripping sea-wind heaves
Through a tunnel of the rocks
Sea-water up in thunderous sheaves
Against the precipitous water-rapids,
To whip from off th' high-hurtled shocks
Bursts of mist which soak the leaves
Of each scented bush that cleaves
To the cliffs. Till Fauns and Lapiths
Dance in the sun bewildered brakes,
Till even flushed Silenus wakes,
And — with a short deep-throated troll
To the wind and to the wine,
Both delirious, both divine! —
Starts, as he drains the tilted bowl,
At din, to rolling uproar grown,
Of rocks dislodged and bounding down,
With splinter of pines and flint-shocked flashes,
From the ridge whereon we dance
In a loud exuberance
Of rattling hoofs whose echoes drown
The squealing joy or reedy pining
Of Pan's pipe, where Pan reclining
Plays in the clouded mountain's crown!