Volume Ii Part 9 (2/2)
So began contention to give delight and be Excellent in things aimed to make life kind.
G.o.d! of whom music And song and blood are pure, The day is never darkened That had thee here obscure.
VIII
You with sh.e.l.ly horns, rams! and, promontory goats, You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew!
Bulls, that walk the pastures in kingly-flas.h.i.+ng coats!
Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few!
You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays, You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent: He has been our fellow, the morning of our days!
Us he chose for housemates, and this way went.
G.o.d! of whom music And song and blood are pure, The day is never darkened That had thee here obscure.
MELAMPUS
I
With love exceeding a simple love of the things That glide in gra.s.ses and rubble of woody wreck; Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck; Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball; Or cast their web between bramble and th.o.r.n.y hook; The good physician Melampus, loving them all, Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.
II
For him the woods were a home and gave him the key Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers.
The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we To earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours: And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows In them, in us, from the source by man unattained Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose.
III
And this he deemed might be boon of love to a breast Embracing tenderly each little motive shape, The p.r.o.ne, the flitting, who seek their food whither best Their wits direct, whither best from their foes escape.
For closer drawn to our mother's natural milk, As babes they learn where her motherly help is great: They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk, And need they medical antidotes, find them straight.
IV
Of earth and sun they are wise, they nourish their broods, Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and pain Like swimmers varying billows: never in woods Runs white insanity fleeing itself: all sane The woods revolve: as the tree its shadowing limns To some resemblance in motion, the rooted life Restrains disorder: you hear the primitive hymns Of earth in woods issue wild of the web of strife.
V
Now sleeping once on a day of marvellous fire, A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave regret That death his people had dealt their dam and their sire, Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and set Their tongues to lick him: the swift affectionate tongue Of each ran licking the slumberer: then his ears A forked red tongue tickled shrewdly: sudden upsprung, He heard a voice piping: Ay, for he has no fears!
VI
A bird said that, in the notes of birds, and the speech Of men, it seemed: and another renewed: He moves To learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach; He feeds his young as do we, and as we love loves.
No fears have I of a man who goes with his head To earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of hand: I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed; I pipe him much for his good could he understand.
VII
Melampus touched at his ears, laid finger on wrist He was not dreaming, he sensibly felt and heard.
Above, through leaves, where the tree-twigs inter-twist, He spied the birds and the bill of the speaking bird.
His cus.h.i.+on mosses in shades of various green, The lumped, the antlered, he pressed, while the sunny snake Slipped under: draughts he had drunk of clear Hippocrene, It seemed, and sat with a gift of the G.o.ds awake.
VIII
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