Poems: New and Old Part 22

A poet's dream was never yet less great Because it issued through the ivory gate!

Show me one leaf from that old wood divine, And all your ardour, all your hopes are mine.

THE POET.

May Venus bend me to no harder task!

For--Pan be praised!--I hold the gift you ask.

The leaf, the legend, that your wish fulfils, To-day he brought me from the Umbrian hills.

{183}.

THE LADY.

Your young Italian--yes! I saw you stand And point his path across our well-walled land: A sculptor's model, but alas! no G.o.d: These narrow fields the goat-foot never trod!

THE POET.

Yet from his eyes the mirth a moment glanced To which the streams of old Arcadia danced; And on his tongue still lay the childish lore Of that lost world for which you hope no more.

THE LADY.

Tell me!--from where I watched I saw his face, And his hands moving with a rustic grace, Caught too the alien sweetness of his speech, But sound alone, not sense, my ears could reach.

THE POET.

He asked if we in England ever heard The tiny beasts, half insect and half bird, That neither eat nor sleep, but die content When they in endless song their strength have spent.

THE LADY.

Cicalas! how the name enchants me back To the grey olives and the dust-white track!

Was there a story then?--I have forgot, Or else by chance my Umbrians told it not.

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THE POET.

Lover of music, you at least should know That these were men in ages long ago,-- Ere music was,--and then the Muses came, And love of song took hold on them like flame.

THE LADY.

Yes, I remember now the voice that speaks-- Most living still of all the deathless Greeks-- Yet tell me--how they died divinely mad, And of the Muses what reward they had.

THE POET.

They are reborn on earth, and from the first They know not sleep, they hunger not nor thirst Summer with glad Cicala's song they fill, Then die, and go to haunt the Muses' Hill.

THE LADY.

They are reborn indeed! and rightly you The far-heard echo of their music knew!

Pray now to Pan, since you too, it would seem, Were there with Phaedrus, by Ilissus' stream.

THE POET.

Beloved Pan, and all ye G.o.ds whose grace For ever haunts our short life's resting-place, Outward and inward make me one true whole, And grant me beauty in the inmost soul!

{185}.

THE LADY.

And thou, O Night, O starry Queen of Air, Remember not my blind and faithless prayer!

Let me too live, let me too sing again, Since Beauty wanders still the ways of men.

{186}.

'The Faun'

Yesterday I thought to roam Idly through the fields of home, And I came at morning's end To our brook's familiar bend.

There I raised my eyes, and there, s.h.i.+ning through an ampler air, Folded in by hills of blue Such as Wess.e.x never knew, Changed as in a waking dream Flowed the well-remembered stream.

Now a line of wattled pale Fenced the downland from the vale, Now the sedge was set with reeds Fitter for Arcadian meads, And where I was wont to find Only things of timid kind, Now the Genius of the pool Mocked me from his corner cool.

Eyes he had with malice quick, Tufted hair and ears a-p.r.i.c.k, And, above a tiny chin, Lips with laughter wide a-grin.

{187}.

Therewithal a s.h.a.ggy flank In the crystal clear he sank, And beneath the unruffled tide A little pair of hooves I spied.

Yet though plainly there he stood, Creature of the wave and wood, Under his satyric grace Something manlike I could trace, And the eyes that mocked me there Like a gleam of memory were.

"So," said I at last to him, Frowning from the river's brim, "This is where you come to play, Heedless of the time of day."

"Nay," replied the youthful G.o.d, Leaning on the flowery sod, "Here there are no clocks, and so Time can neither come nor go."

"Little goat," said I, "you're late, And your dinner will not wait: If to-day you wish to eat, Trust me, you must find your feet."

"Father," said the little goat, "Do you know that I can float?