II

Up! the ag'd centaurs lie yet sleeping,

While crouch I palled of this cavern lair THE CENTAUR'S

And watch the stretched sea-eagle sweeping MORNING SONG.

Down the grey-blue drizzling air.

The sea-nymphs, too, will now be waking,

If sickle-eyed they have not played

Across the moonlight sets me aching,

Longing and slinking, half afraid,

Down the feathery, tawny sand

On sighing tread

Deep into banks of glistering shell,

To halt in dread

Lest my hoof-scrunch break the spell

Of the syren-chants that swell

From the dim shoals toward the land.

But this morn the breeze is blowing

Freshly: I hear lightly flowing

From the bending giant beam

Bars the forehead of our door

The golden raindrops in a stream

Pattering on the steamy floor.

It is the Centaur's voice I hear!

Young and lusty, deep and clear:

And the Panisks at his voice

In their fastnesses rejoice,

Emerging from the creviced crag

Or cave beneath the mountain's jag,

Merry, shaggy, light of hoof,

To run along the narrow roof,

And upon the shelved height

Dance before the swimming light.

And I see upon the ledge,

Astir over the hanging edge, THE CENTAUR'S

A russet briar cold with dew MORNING SONG

And beyond, forlornly pent ( continued )

In a grey cloud's gliding rent,

A pure pool of the brightest blue:

So near it seems I've but to cast

A flint out on the forward vast

To mark it flashing blithely through!

And now at last!

At last

The great Sun,

The Sudden One,

Stamps upon the cloudy floor;

The heavens are split, and through the floor

Heaven's golden treasures tumbling pour....

And the Sun himself, divine,

Doth descend

In such a bursting blaze of shine

That his glorious hair is shook

Over the wide world's craggiest end!

And, even I, I dare not look.

I will shout! I will ramp!

Just three bounds: then out and stamp

Where the air like water is

Eddying up over the precipice;—

Wind with an edge to it, sea-damp,

Blowing from the canyon's race

Where the dripping sea-wind heaves

Through a tunnel of the rocks

Sea-water up in thunderous sheaves

Against the precipitous water-rapids,

To whip from off th’ high-hurtled shocks

Bursts of mist which soak the leaves

Of each scented bush that cleaves

To the cliffs. Till Fauns and Lapiths

Dance in the sun-bewildered brakes,

Till even flushed Silenus wakes,

And — with a short deep-throated troll

To the wind and to the wine,

Both delirious, both divine!—

Starts, as he drains the tilted bowl,

At din, to rolling uproar grown,

Of rocks dislodged and bounding down,

With splinter of pines and flint-shocked flashes,

From the ridge whereon we dance

In a loud exuberance

Of rattling hoofs whose echoes drown

The squealing joy or reedy pining

Of Pan's pipe, where Pan reclining

Plays in the clouded mountain's crown!