Poems & Ballads Volume III Part 6

And we, whom dreams embolden, We can but creep and sing And watch through heaven's waste hollow The flight no sight may follow To the utter bourne beholden Of none that lack thy wing: And we, whom dreams embolden, We can but creep and sing.

Our dreams have wings that falter, Our hearts bear hopes that die; For thee no dream could better A life no fears may fetter, A pride no care can alter, That wots not whence or why Our dreams have wings that falter, Our hearts bear hopes that die.

With joy more fierce and sweeter Than joys we deem divine Their lives, by time untarnished, Are girt about and garnished, Who match the wave's full metre And drink the wind's wild wine With joy more fierce and sweeter Than joys we deem divine.

Ah, well were I for ever, Wouldst thou change lives with me, And take my song's wild honey, And give me back thy sunny Wide eyes that weary never, And wings that search the sea; Ah, well were I for ever, Wouldst thou change lives with me.

_Beachy Head: September 1886._

PAN AND THALa.s.sIUS

A LYRICAL IDYL

THALa.s.sIUS

Pan!

PAN

O sea-stray, seed of Apollo, What word wouldst thou have with me?

My ways thou wast fain to follow Or ever the years hailed thee Man.

Now If August brood on the valleys, If satyrs laugh on the lawns, What part in the wildwood alleys Hast thou with the fleet-foot fauns-- Thou?

See!

Thy feet are a man's--not cloven Like these, not light as a boy's: The tresses and tendrils inwoven That lure us, the lure of them cloys Thee.

Us The joy of the wild woods never Leaves free of the thirst it slakes: The wild love throbs in us ever That burns in the dense hot brakes Thus.

Life, Eternal, pa.s.sionate, awless, Insatiable, mutable, dear, Makes all men's law for us lawless: We strive not: how should we fear Strife?

We, The birds and the bright winds know not Such joys as are ours in the mild Warm woodland; joys such as grow not In waste green fields of the wild Sea.

No; Long since, in the world's wind veering, Thy heart was estranged from me: Sweet Echo shall yield thee not hearing: What have we to do with thee?

Go.

THALa.s.sIUS

Ay!

Such wrath on thy nostril quivers As once in Sicilian heat Bade herdsmen quail, and the rivers Shrank, leaving a path for thy feet Dry?

Nay, Low down in the hot soft hollow Too snakelike hisses thy spleen: "O sea-stray, seed of Apollo!"

What ill hast thou heard or seen?

Say.

Man Knows well, if he hears beside him The snarl of thy wrath at noon, What evil may soon betide him, Or late, if thou smite not soon, Pan.

Me The sound of thy flute, that flatters The woods as they smile and sigh, Charmed fast as it charms thy satyrs, Can charm no faster than I Thee.

Fast Thy music may charm the splendid Wide woodland silence to sleep With sounds and dreams of thee blended And whispers of waters that creep Past.

Here The spell of thee breathes and pa.s.ses And bids the heart in me pause, Hushed soft as the leaves and the gra.s.ses Are hushed if the storm's foot draws Near.

Yet The panic that strikes down strangers Transgressing thy ways unaware Affrights not me nor endangers Through dread of thy secret snare Set.

PAN

Whence May man find heart to deride me?

Who made his face as a star To shine as a G.o.d's beside me?

Nay, get thee away from us, far Hence.

THALa.s.sIUS

Then Shall no man's heart, as he raises A hymn to thy secret head, Wax great with the G.o.dhead he praises: Thou, G.o.d, shalt be like unto dead Men.

PAN

Grace I take not of men's thanksgiving, I crave not of lips that live; They die, and behold, I am living, While they and their dead G.o.ds give Place.

THALa.s.sIUS

Yea: Too lightly the words were spoken That mourned or mocked at thee dead: But whose was the word, the token, The song that answered and said Nay?

PAN

Whose But mine, in the midnight hidden, Clothed round with the strength of night And mysteries of things forbidden For all but the one most bright Muse?

THALa.s.sIUS

Hers Or thine, O Pan, was the token That gave back empire to thee When power in thy hands lay broken As reeds that quake if a bee Stirs?

PAN

Whom Have I in my wide woods need of?

Urania's limitless eyes Behold not mine end, though they read of A word that shall speak to the skies Doom.