LITMIR.BIZ

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girl with vine-leaves on her breast

       Will filch their beechnuts from the sleeping Pans

       So softly that the little nested thrush

       Will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush

       Down the green valley where the fallen dew

       Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store,

       Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew

       Trample the loosestrife down along the shore,

       And where their horned master sits in state

       Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate!

       Sing on! and soon with passion-wearied face

       Through the cool leaves Apollo’s lad will come,

       The Tyrian prince his bristled boar will chase

       Adown the chestnut copses all a-bloom,

       And ivory-limbed, gray-eyed, with look of pride,

       After yon velvet-coated deer the virgin maid will ride.

       Sing on! and I the dying boy will, see

       Stain with his purple blood the waxen bell

       That overweighs the jacinth, and to me

       The wretched Cyprian her woe will tell,

       And I will kiss her mouth and streaming eyes,

       And lead her to the myrtle-hidden grove where Adon lies!

       Cry out aloud on Itys! memory

       That foster-brother of remorse and pain

       Drops poison in mine ear — O to be free,

       To burn one’s old ships! and to launch again

       Into the white-plumed battle of the waves

       And fight old Proteus for the spoil of coral-flowered caves?

       O for Medea with her poppied spell!

       O for the secret of the Colchian shrine!

       O for one leaf of that pale asphodel

       Which binds the tired brows of Proserpine,

       And sheds such wondrous dews at eve that she

       Dreams of the fields of Enna, by the far Sicilian sea,

       Where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased

       From lily to lily on the level mead,

       Ere yet her sombre Lord had bid her taste

       The deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed,

       Ere the black steeds had harried her away

       Down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick and sunless day.

       O for one midnight and as paramour

       The Venus of the little Melian farm!

       O that some antique statue for one hour

       Might wake to passion, and that I could charm

       The Dawn at Florence from its dumb despair,

       Mix with those mighty limbs and make that giant breast my lair!

       Sing on! sing on! I would be drunk with life,

       Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth,

       I would forget the wearying wasted strife,

       The riven vale, the Gorgon eyes of Truth,

       The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer,

       The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air!

       Sing on! sing on! O feathered Niobe,

       Thou canst make sorrow beautiful, and steal

       From joy its sweetest music, not as we

       Who by dead voiceless silence strive to heal

       Our too untented wounds, and do but keep

       Pain barricaded in our hearts, and murder pillowed sleep.

       Sing louder yet, why must I still behold

       The wan white face of that deserted Christ,

       Whose bleeding hands my hands did once infold.

       Whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed,

       And now in mute and marble misery Sirs in

       His lone dishonored House and weeps, perchance for me.

       O memory cast down thy wreathed shell!

       Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene!

       O sorrow, sorrow keep thy cloistered cell

       Nor dim with tears this limpid Castaly!

       Cease, cease, sad bird, thou dost the forest wrong

       To vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned song!

       Cease, cease, or if ‘tis anguish to be dumb

       Take from the pastoral thrush her simpler air,

       Whose jocund carelessness doth more become

       This English woodland than thy keen despair,

       Ah! cease and let the north wind bear thy lay

       Back to the rocky hills of Thrace, the stormy Daulian bay.

       A moment more, the startled leaves had stirred,

       Endymion would have passed across the mead

       Moonstruck with love, and this still Thames had heard

       Pan plash and paddle groping for some reed

       To lure from her blue cave that Naiad maid

       Who for such piping listens half in joy and half afraid.

       A moment more, the waking dove had cooed,

       The silver daughter of the silver sea

       With the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed

       Her wanton from the chase, the Dryope

       Had thrust aside the branches of her oak

       To see the he lusty gold-haired lad rein in his snorting yoke.

       A moment more, the trees had stooped to kiss

       Pale Daphne just awakening from the swoon

       Of tremulous laurels, lonely Salmacis

       Had bared his barren beauty to the moon,

       And through the vale with sad voluptuous smile

       Antinous had wandered, the red lotus of the Nile.

       Down leaning the from his black and clustering hair

       To shade those slumberous eyelids’ caverned bliss,

       Or else on yonder grassy slope with bare

       High-tuniced limbs unravished Artemis

       Had bade her hounds give tongue, and roused the deer

       From his green ambuscade with shrill hallo and pricking spear.

       Lie still, lie still, O passionate heart, lie still!

       O Melancholy, fold thy raven wing!

       O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill

       Come not with such desponded answering!

       No more thou winged Marsyas complain,

       Apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs of pain!

       It was a dream, the glade is tenantless,

       No soft Ionian laughter moves the air,

       The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness,

       And from the copse left desolate and bare

       Fled is young Bacchus with his revelry,

       Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thrilling melody

      

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