Volume Iii Part 8 (2/2)

There chimed a bubbled underbrew With witch-wild spray of vocal dew.

It seemed a single harper swept Our wild wood's inner chords and waked A spirit that for yearning ached Ere men desired and joyed or wept.

Or now a legion ravis.h.i.+ng Musician rivals did unite In love of sweetness high to sing The subtle song that rivals light; From breast of earth to breast of sky: And they were secret, they were nigh: A hand the magic might disperse; The magic swung my universe.

Yet sharpened breath forbade to dream, Where all was visionary gleam; Where Seasons, as with cymbals, clashed; And feelings, pa.s.sing joy and woe, Churned, gurgled, spouted, interflashed, Nor either was the one we know: Nor pregnant of the heart contained In us were they, that griefless plained, That plaining soared; and through the heart Struck to one note the wide apart:- A pa.s.sion surgent from despair; A paining bliss in fervid cold; Off the last vital edge of air, Leap heavenward of the lofty-souled, For rapture of a wine of tears; As had a star among the spheres Caught up our earth to some mid-height Of double life to ear and sight, She giving voice to thought that s.h.i.+nes Keen-brilliant of her deepest mines; While steely drips the rillet clinked, And h.o.a.r with crust the cowslip swelled.

Then was the lyre of earth beheld, Then heard by me: it holds me linked; Across the years to dead-ebb sh.o.r.es I stand on, my blood-thrill restores.

But would I conjure into me Those issue notes, I must review What serious breath the woodland drew; The low throb of expectancy; How the white mother-muteness pressed On leaf and meadow-herb; how shook, Nigh speech of mouth, the sparkle-crest Seen spinning on the bracken-crook.

THE TEACHING OF THE NUDE

I

A satyr spied a G.o.ddess in her bath, Unseen of her attendant nymphs; none knew.

Forthwith the creature to his fellows drew, And looking backward on the curtained path, He strove to tell; he could but heave a breast Too full, and point to mouth, with failing leers: Vainly he danced for speech, he giggled tears, Made as if torn in two, as if tight pressed, As if cast p.r.o.ne; then fetching whimpered tunes For words, flung heel and set his hairy flight Through forest-hollows, over rocky height.

The green leaves buried him three rounds of moons.

A senatorial Satyr named what herb Had hurried him outrunning reason's curb.

II

'Tis told how when that hieaway unchecked To dell returned, he seemed of tempered mood: Even as the valley of the torrent rude, The torrent now a brook, the valley wrecked.

In him, to hale him high or hurl aheap, G.o.ddess and Goatfoot hourly wrestled sore; Hourly the immortal prevailing more: Till one hot noon saw Meliboeus peep From thicket-sprays to where his full-blown dame, In circle by the l.u.s.ty friskers gripped, Laughed the showered rose-leaves while her limbs were stripped.

She beckoned to our Satyr, and he came.

Then twirled she mounds of ripeness, wreath of arms.

His hoof kicked up the clothing for such charms.

BREATH OF THE BRIAR

I

O briar-scents, on yon wet wing Of warm South-west wind brus.h.i.+ng by, You mind me of the sweetest thing That ever mingled frank and shy: When she and I, by love enticed, Beneath the orchard-apples met, In equal halves a ripe one sliced, And smelt the juices ere we ate.

II

That apple of the briar-scent, Among our lost in Britain now, Was green of rind, and redolent Of sweetness as a milking cow.

The briar gives it back, well nigh The damsel with her teeth on it; Her twinkle between frank and shy, My thirst to bite where she had bit.

EMPEDOCLES

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