Classic Poem

Late as I sat beneath the kissing boughs
Of a dark wood, within whose shadow deep
My soul bathed, naked of the fretting vest
Of human care—in the green seat of gloom
Half-lost and grown oblivious to change,—
I mused upon the time when not as now
Men from the cities and close-girded fields,
From drowsy hearths and roof-cast shadows came,
Led by a feeble longing of the soul,
To drink the breath of forests, and explore
The realm of wonder and dim haunt of dreams;
But dwelt or wandered there the early race,
Men lion-limb'd, and like the eagle eyed,
And met with frequent gods and piping fauns,
And white-limb'd nymphs, and dryads; for the trees
Not then were deemed unconscious, in each other's sight
Who grew through centuries of age; nor then
Was there no soul within the singing brook
To prompt its music, and each hollow cave
Had its blind nymph aye pining for a sound,
To feed the dark and silence-hungered void.

O golden time, when life was poesy!
And he who sought the forest's sombre depths,
With a fresh child-like longing for the life
Natural and sweet, prefigured in his heart,
The life of gods, and nymphs, and early men,
Was not awed back by dire portents of fear,
And sharp necessity, and famished want,
Time-meting foresight, and forecasting doubt
Of place and limit, but their green labyrinths
Pierced, nor guided his interfluous feet
With other thought than, in some deeper heart
Of forest gloom, to see rough-footed Pan
With budding forehead and wood-witching pipe,
Or the white bosom through a parting mist
Of oriad, or goddess, or with limbs
That shamed the foam, the naiad, or, less happy, she
Born with the oak to perish with its age.

So long my soul, numbered with a drowsy grief
In thinking of these old divinities,
Gave ear unto the whisperings of the Past,—
Into the labyrinths of my dream so deep
It wandered 'midst dark figures bronzed by time
Into a look of sadness that makes yearn
The mortal heart with more than mortal love,—
That longer the dark hush and torpor deep
Of that unpeopled wood it might not bear;
And I, so rapt, as I had been Apollo's self
Awakening from a sleep of centuries, rose
And bound my head with laurels, and aloud
Shouted Awake! unto the woods and caves,
And Echo from the woods and caves unto the air
Re-syllabled my shouts. Then from my hand
Upon the thrilling strings arose a strain,
Beyond my power, from impulse not my own,
Which with my voice made deep and passionate wail,
That with its longings almost might create
The thing it sought; so deep and loud it swelled
As it had caught all sounds into itself,
And left an aching silence in the air,—
Piercing the hollow and wide-listening void,
Like lightning the else deep unlightened night.

And still I cried, Awake! sometimes in tone
So musically plaintive as might wake
Oblivious wonder in the ear of death,
And all his realm unpeople with its might;
And sometimes in a fiery transport of swift strains
My invocation rose, Awake! Awake!
By the old trees whose fresh young hearts, each spring,
Load all their branches with sweet-scented buds,
By flowers, of young poets the first words,—
The lovers, that first press young maidens' breasts,—
By mossy grots, by all the singing brooks
That teach the wood-birds songs, Awake! Awake!
By trees none love, by echoes unawaked,
By brooks unheard, by flowers—when at my ear
I heard a voice that said, Apollo, turn!
Turn, O Apollo! A voice? it was a soul
That breathed its audible thought upon the air
In music: On swift foot I turned, and lo,
Beauty that awed the sense like fear! a form
Majestical and lovely as a shape
Born of the slumbers of a dreaming god,
And bright as she begotten of the Sun
On his own splendor; yet were her dark eyes
Sad as the evening: My unprompted lips
Breathed forth Calliope! Scarce was the air
Made music by the word, when from my sight
She faded, and her eyes alone from the pale air
Looked sadly forth, then waned,—with them my life
Seemed to dissolve—my anguished soul grew dim,
And falling there where should have been her feet,
I shrieked, Return, return, Calliope!
And Echo, that re-syllabled my shouts
When to the woods I cried Awake! Awake!
Shouted, Return, return, Calliope!