XIII

The Naiads. Come, ye sorrowful, and steep

Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep: THE NAIADS’

For our kisses lightlier run MUSIC.

Than the traceries of the sun

By the lolling water cast

Up grey precipices vast,

Lifting smooth and warm and steep

Out of the palely shimmering deep.

Come, ye sorrowful, 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 an 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 the 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 languorous

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 nectarous sleep.

Sweet water-voices! now must I The Faun

Unto your sorrowings reply. prepares

But hark! or ever there can sound to reply.

On the lull air the first profound

Few murmurs of my lyre's grave strings,

A voice uprises. Who now sings

The noon's and his own tristfulness?

A slim youth — in a shepherd's dress,

Yet without sheep — who careless lies

Upon the hill. His shepherd guise

Tokens, perhaps, a poet's heart

Which joys in wandering apart

From the dinned ways where chariots roll,

From the shrill sophist with his shoal

Of gapers, from the angry mart,

From the full eyes and empty heart

Of babbling women, from the neat

Aridity of paven street,

A heart that wandering, musing, sings

The joy, depth, pain of simple things:

The Youth. The earth is still; only the white sun climbs

Through the green silence of the branching limes, MIDDAY IN

Whose linked flowers hanging from the still tree-top ARCADIA.

Distil their soundless syrup drop by drop,

While‘ twixt the starry bracket of their lips

The black bee drowsing floats and drowsing sips.

The flimsy leaves hang on the bright blue air

Calm-suspended. Deep peace is everywhere

Filled with the murmurous rumour of high noon.

Earth seems with open eyes to sink and swoon.

In the sky peace: where nothing moves

Save the sun that smiles and loves.

A quivering peace is on the grass.

Through the noon gloam butterflies pass,

White and hot blue, only to where

They can float flat and dream on the soft air....

The trees are asleep, beautiful, slumbrous trees!

Stirred only by the passion of the breeze,

That, like a warm wave welling over rocks,

Loosens and lifts the mass of drowsing locks.

Earth, too, under the profound grass

Sleeps and sleeps, and softly heaves her slumbrous mass.

The earth sleeps. Sleeps the newly-buried clay

Or doth divinity trouble it to live alway?

No voice uplifts from under the rapt crust.

The dust cries to the unregarding dust.

Over the hill the stopped notes of twin reeds

Speak like drops from an old wound that bleeds:

A yokel's pipe an ancient pastoral sings

Above the innumerable murmur of hid wings.

I hear the cadence, sorrowful and sweet,

The oldest burthen of the earth repeat:

All love, all passion, all strife, all delight

Are but the dreams that haunt earth's visioned night.

In her eternal consciousness the stir

Of Alexander is no more to her

Than you or I: being all part of dreams,

The shadowiest shadow of a thing that seems,

The images the lone pipe-player sees,

Sitting and playing to the lone, noon breeze.

One note, one life!

They sleep: soon we as these!