He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep cool bed of the river; The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon-fly had fled away, Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan, While turbidly flow'd the river; And hack'd and hew'd as a great god can With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan (How tall it stood in the river!), Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring,
And notch'd the poor dry empty thing
In noies, as he sat by the river.
'This is the way,' laugh'd the great god Pan (Laugh'd while he sat by the river),
'The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.' Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and painFor the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds of the river.
SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE
I THOUGHT Once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, Who each one in a gracious hand appears To bear a gift for mortals, old or young: And, as I mused it in its antique tongue, I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware, So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair; And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,—
"Guess now who holds thee?"- -"Death," I said. But, there The silver answer rang,-" Not Death, but Love."
BUT only three in all God's universe
Have heard this word thou hast said,-Himself, beside
Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied
One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse
So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce
My sight from seeing thee,-that if I had died,
The deathweights, placed there, would have signified
Less absolute exclusion. "Nay" is worse
From God than from all others, O my friend! Men could not part us with their worldly jars, Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend; Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars: And, heaven being rolled between us at the end, We should but vow the faster for the stars.
UNLIKE are we, unlike, O princely Heart! Unlike our uses and our destinies.
Our ministering two angels look surprise
On one another, as they strike athwart
Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art A guest for queens to social pageantries,
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part
Of chief musician. What hast thou to do With looking from the lattice-lights at me,
A poor, tired, wandcring singer, singing through The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
The chrism is on thine head,-on mine, the dew,- And Death must dig the level where these agree.
THOU hast thy calling to some palace-floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing, from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more. And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear To let thy music drop here unaware In folds of golden fulness at my door? Look up and see the casement broken in, The bats and owlets builders in the roof! My cricket chirps against thy mandolin. Hush, call no echo up in further proof Of desolation! there's a voice within
That weeps . . . as thou must sing. . . alone, aloof.
I LIFT my heavy heart up solemnly, As once Electra her sepulchral urn, And looking in thine eyes, I overturn The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see What a great heap of grief lay hid in me, And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn Could tread them out to darkness utterly,
It might be well perhaps. But if instead
Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow
The gray dust up, . . . those laurels on thine head, O my Beloved, will not shield thee so,
That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! go.
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore- Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
THE face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink, Was caught up into love, and taught the whole Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink, And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear. The names of country, heaven, are changed away For where thou art or shalt be, there or here; And this... this lute and song . . . loved yesterday, (The singing angels know) are only dear
Because thy name moves right in what they say.
WHAT can I give thee back, O liberal
And princely giver, who hast brought the gold And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold, And laid them on the outside of the wall For such as I to take or leave withal, In unexpected largesse? am I cold, Ungrateful, that for these most manifold High gifts, I render nothing back at all? Not so; not cold, but very poor instead. Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run The colors from my life, and left so dead And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done To give the same as pillow to thy head. Go farther! let it serve to trample on.
CAN it be right to give what I can give? To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years Re-sighing on my lips renunciative
Through those infrequent smiles which fail to live For all thy adjurations? O my fears,
That this can scarce be right! We are not peers, So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve, That givers of such gifts as mine are, must Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas! I will not soil thy purple with my dust, Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass, Nor give thee any love-which were unjust. Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.
YET, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need
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