The Naiads' Music: From A Faun's Holiday

Come, ye sorrowful, and steep

Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep:

For our kisses lightlier run

Than the traceries of the sun

By the lolling water cast

Up grey precipices vast,

Lifting smooth and waem and steep

Out of the palely shimmering deep.

Come, ye sorrowul, and take

Kisses that are but half awake:

For here are eyes O softer far

Than the blossom of the star

Upon the mothy twilit waters,

And here are mouths whose gentle laughters

Are but the echoes of the deep

Laughing and murmuring in its sleep.

Come, ye sorrowful, and see

The raindrops flaming goldenly

On the stream's eddies overhead

And dragonflies with drops of red

In the crisp surface of each wing

Threading slant rains that flash and sing,

Or under the water-lily's cup,

From darkling depths, roll slowly up

The bronze flanks of ancient bream

Into the hot sun's shattered beam,

Or over a sunk tree's bubbled bole

The perch stream in a golden shoal:

Come, ye sorrowful; our deep

Holds dreams lovelier than sleep.

But if ye sons of Sorrow come

Only wishing to be numb:

Our eyes are sad as bluebell posies,

Our breasts are soft as silken roses,

And our hands are tenderer

Than he breaths that scarce can stir

The sunlit eglantine that is

Murmurous with hidden bees.

Come, ye sorrowful, and steep

Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep.

Come, ye sorrowful, for here

No voices sound but fond and clear

Of mouths as lorn as is the rose

That under water doth disclose,

Amid her crimson petals torn,

A heart as golden as the morn;

And here are tresses langourous

As the weeds wander over us,

And brows as holy and as bland

As the honey-coloured sand

Lying sun-entranced below

The lazy water's limpid flow:

Come, ye sorrowful, and steep

Your tired brows in a nectorous sleep.