Classic Poem

Verge of an upland glade among the Himalayas.

FIRST FAUN

... Hark! I hear
Aerial voices —

SECOND FAUN

Whist!

FIRST FAUN

It is the wind
Leaping against the sunrise, on the heights.

SECOND FAUN

No, no, yon mountain-springs —

FIRST FAUN

Hark, hark, oh, hark! —

SECOND FAUN

Are budding into foam-flowers: see, they fall
Laughing before the dawn —

FIRST FAUN

Oh, the sweet music!

CHILD-FAUN

Dear brother, say, oh say, what fills the air?
The leaves whisper, yet is not any wind:
I am afraid.

FIRST FAUN

Be not afraid, dear child:
There is no gloom.

CHILD-FAUN

But silence: and — and — then,
The birds have suddenly ceased: and see, alow
The gossamer quivers where my startled hare —
Slipt from my leash — — cow'rs 'mid the fox-glove-bells,
His eyes like pansies in a lonely wood!
Oh, I am afraid — afraid — though glad: —

SECOND FAUN

Why glad?

CHILD-FAUN

I know not.

FIRST FAUN

Never yet an evil god
Forsook the dusk. Lo! all our vales are filled
With light: the darkest shimmers in pale blue:
Nought is forlorn: no evil thing goeth by.

SECOND FAUN

They say —

FIRST FAUN

What? who?

SECOND FAUN

They of the hills: they say
That a lost god —

FIRST FAUN

Hush, hush: beware!

SECOND FAUN

And why?
There is no god in the blue empty air?
Where else?

FIRST FAUN

There is a lifting up of joy
The morning moves in ecstasy. Never!
Oh, never fairer morning dawned than this.
Somewhat is nigh!

SECOND FAUN

Maybe: and yet I hear
Nought, save day's familiar sounds, nought see
But the sweet concourse of familiar things.

FIRST FAUN

Speak on, though never a single leaf but hears,
And, like the hollow shells o'the twisted nuts
That fall in autumn, aye murmuringly holds
The breath of bygone sound. We know not when —
To whom-these little wavering tongues betray
Our heedless words, wild wanderers though we be.
What say the mountain-lords?

SECOND FAUN

That a lost god
Fares hither through the dark, ever the dark.

FIRST FAUN

What dark?

SECOND FAUN

Not the blank hollows of the night
Blind is he though a god: forgotten graves
The cavernous depths of his oblivious eyes.
His face is as the desert, blanched with ruins.
His voice none ever heard, though whispers say
That in the dead of icy winters far
Beyond the utmost peaks we ever clomb
It hath gone forth-a deep, an awful woe.

FIRST FAUN

What seeks he?

SECOND FAUN

No one knoweth.

FIRST FAUN

Yet a god,
And blind!

SECOND FAUN

Ay so: and I have heard beside
That he is not as other gods; but from vast age —
So vast, that in his youth those hills were wet
With the tossed spume of each returning tide —
He hath lost knowledge of the things that are,
All memory of what was, in that dim Past
Which was old time for him; and knoweth nought,
Nought feels, but inextinguishable pain.
Titanic woe and burden of long aeons
Of unrequited quest.

FIRST FAUN

But if he be
Of the Immortal Brotherhood, though blind,
How lost to them?

SECOND FAUN

I know not, I. 'Tis said —
Lython the Centaur told me in those days
When he had pity on me in his cave
Far up among the hills-that the lost god
Is curs'd of all his kin, and that his curse
Lies like a cloud about their golden home
So evermore he goeth to and fro
The shadow of their glory ...
Ay, he knows
The lost beginnings of the things that are
We are but morning-dreams to him, and Man
But a fantastic shadow of the dawn
The very Gods seem children to his age,
Who reigned before their birth-throes filled the sky
With the myriad shattered lights that are the stars.

FIRST FAUN

Where reigned this ancient God?

SECOND FAUN

Old Lython said
His kingdom was the Void where evermore
Silence sits throned upon oblivion.

FIRST FAUN

What wants he here?

SECOND FAUN

He hateth Helios,
And dogs his steps. None knoweth more.

FIRST FAUN

Aha!
I heed no dotard god! Behold, behold,
My ears betrayed me not: Oh, hearken now!

CHILD-FAUN

Brother, O brother, all the birds are wild
With song, and through the sun-splashed wood there goes
A sound as of a multitude of wings,

SECOND FAUN

The sun, the sun! the flowers in the grass!
Oh, the white glory!

FIRST FAUN

'Tis the Virgin God!
Hark, hear the hymns that thrill the winds of morn,
Wild paeans to the light! The white processionals!
They come! They come! ...

BALLAD OF THE SONG OF THE SEA-WIND

What is the song the sea-wind sings —
The old, old song it singeth for aye?
When abroad it stretches its mighty wings
And driveth the white clouds far away,
What is the song it sings to-day?
From fire and tumult the white world came,
When all was a mist of driven spray
And the whirling fragments of a frame!

What is the song the sea-wind sings —

The old, old song it singeth for aye?
It seems to breathe a thousand things
Ere the world grew sad and old and grey —
Of the dear gods banished far astray —
Of strange wild rumours of joy and shame!
The Earth is old, so old, To-day —
Blind and halt and weary and lame.

What is the song the sea-wind sings —
The old, old song it singeth for aye?
Like a trumpet blast its voice out-rings,
The world spins down the darksome way
It crieth aloud in wild dismay.
The Earth that from fire and tumult came
Draws swilt to hey weary end To-day,
Her fires are fusing for that last Flame!

ENVOY

What singeth the sea-wind thus for aye,
From fire and tumult the white world came!
What is the sea-wind's cry To-day —
Her central fires make one vast flame!