SECOND DAY

The rose-trees show but a tuft of green

Where a stern, cold pruning-knife has been,

But they promise a summer of fragrant wealth:

How the small buds come to the light by stealth

Like pixies shy; yet a pruning knife

Leads every browny-bare branch to life.

Slowly I passed thro’ the rustic gate,

Where wine-red roses will hold June fete;

The wind stole out from the blossoming row

Of the cherry-trees, and he whispered low:

“Are you content to be bound by a wall,

E'en tho’ it boundeth things beautiful?

Tho’ cherry and apple bloom over it fall,

Always it is, and it hath been, a wall.

‘ Tis true that thro’ it there is a wicket,

But what can it know of the wild grown thicket

That grows where its pathway may never wander:

Out of this garden — the blue land yonder?”

And a cuckoo called; and the echo ran,

“Evoe, Evoe, Evoe, great Pan!”

By the old elm's portal of Arcady

My Lover alighted and whispered to me,

“O lily of laughter! O sister of flowers!

Wander alone in Arcadian bowers,

And I will return when the sun goes down,

And wing you home to your grey, grey town.

I kiss your little white hands and feet:

Farewell!” And he rose, on wings so fleet

Over the nests in the cradling larch,

Over the bow of the rainbow's arch.

Where conifers grow in fine profusion,

And birches quiver in sweet confusion,

Where hawthorn waits with a danseuse grace

To burst on the scene with her milk-white face,

And pirouette near some stately spruce,

Scattering around him pearly dews,

Where rabbits scamper thro’ grasses lush,

And a pheasant's screech breaks the noon-day hush,

I journeyed on, till the sun began

His westering course.

“Evoe, great Pan!

Never a note of your pipings to-day

Has guided my steps thro’ the sylvan way.

O! where must I seek in this Paradise?”

“Evoe, Evoe,” a linnet sighs,

“Seek where the sisterly marshes are,

Where the marigold twinkles, a golden star,

Where willow and alder hide the river,

Where timid reed-warblers tremble and shiver.”

The sky showed pink thro’ the branches grey,

And then I heard, as if far away,

A tremulous song, a music of fears

That was strung together by trills of tears,

A quivering star glowed, curtained by leaves,

And the hullets called from some distant eaves.

I found Pan crouched by the river's edge,

His hoofed feet hid by the rushy sedge,

And I listened his plaint.

“O great god Pan,

You sing with the broken heart of a man!

Your song is of Syrinx, who, aeons ago,

Escaped from your loving. Alas! that you know

The music of love, and the music of lack,

And you mourn for the hours that cannot come back,—

But I would learn of merrier things:

The melody murmurs of fluttering wings,

The secrets that fill the nightingaled glades,

The music that stirs in the leaf-colonnades.”

He piped for a minute, then, turning to me,

With a wry, queer smile, said: “In Arcady

No song goes forth to the listening earth

That comes not thro’ travail and tears to birth:

The river weeps as it leaves the fell,

And the note cries out as it mourns the bell;

The bird that praises the young, fair dawn,

Sings of his loss on the twilit lawn,

And those that hymn of the coming spring

Lament for her too, when she taketh wing.

The song of songs is of Death and of Love —

I sing of Syrinx, my own... lost... love.”

He piped again, and the blue mists frail

Swayed in the dusk to the tender wail,

And I dreamed — till I felt on my damp, moist hair,

My Love's cool hand, and his whisper, “Fair,”

Then I felt his arms, and I knew the skies,

Whilst over the mountains I saw Dawn arise,

And another sweet day its course began,

While the hidden stars sang, “Evoe, great Pan!”

And the lark in the blue, “Evoe, great Pan!”

And wistfully I, “Evoe, great Pan!”