LITMIR.BIZ

      Thus ending, on the shrine he heap’d a spire

      Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire;

      Anon he stain’d the thick and spongy sod

      With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god.

      Now while the earth was drinking it, and while

      Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile,

      And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright

      ‘Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light

      Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang:

      “O thou, whose mighty palace roof doth hang

      From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth

      Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death

      Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;

      Who lov’st to see the hamadryads dress

      Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken;

      And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken

      The dreary melody of bedded reeds–

      In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds

      The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth;

      Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth

      Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx–do thou now,

      By thy love’s milky brow!

      By all the trembling mazes that she ran,

      Hear us, great Pan!

      “O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles

      Passion their voices cooingly ‘mong myrtles,

      What time thou wanderest at eventide

      Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side

      Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom

      Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom

      Their ripen’d fruitage; yellow girted bees

      Their golden honeycombs; our village leas

      Their fairest blossom’d beans and poppied corn;

      The chuckling linnet its five young unborn,

      To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries

      Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies

      Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year

      All its completions–be quickly near,

      By every wind that nods the mountain pine,

      O forester divine!

      “Thou, to whom every fawn and satyr flies

      For willing service; whether to surprise

      The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit;

      Or upward ragged precipices flit

      To save poor lambkins from the eagle’s maw;

      Or by mysterious enticement draw

      Bewildered shepherds to their path again;

      Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,

      And gather up all fancifullest shells

      For thee to tumble into Naiads’ cells,

      And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping;

      Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,

      The while they pelt each other on the crown

      With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown–

      By all the echoes that about thee ring,

      Hear us, O satyr king!

      “O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears,

      While ever and anon to his shorn peers

      A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn,

      When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn

      Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms,

      To keep off mildews, and all weather harms:

      Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,

      That come a swooning over hollow grounds,

      And wither drearily on barren moors:

      Dread opener of the mysterious doors

      Leading to universal knowledge–see,

      Great son of Dryope,

      The many that are come to pay their vows

      With leaves about their brows!

      Be still the unimaginable lodge

      For solitary thinkings; such as dodge

      Conception to the very bourne of heaven,

      Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,

      That spreading in this dull and clodded earth

      Gives it a touch ethereal–a new birth:

      Be still a symbol of immensity;

      A firmament reflected in a sea;

      An element filling the space between;

      An unknown–but no more: we humbly screen

      With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending,

      And giving out a shout most heaven rending,

      Conjure thee to receive our humble Pæan,

      Upon thy Mount Lycean!

      Even while they brought the burden to a close,

      A shout from the whole multitude arose,

      That lingered in the air like dying rolls

      Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals

      Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine.

      Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine,

      Young companies nimbly began dancing

      To the swift treble pipe, and humming string.

      Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly

      To tunes forgotten–out of memory:

      Fair creatures! whose young childrens’ children bred

      Thermopylæ its heroes–not yet dead,

      But in old marbles ever beautiful.

      High genitors, unconscious did they cull

      Time’s sweet first-fruits–they danc’d to weariness,

      And then in quiet circles did they press

      The hillock turf, and caught the latter end

      Of some strange history, potent to send

      A young mind from its bodily tenement.

      Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent

      On either side; pitying the sad death

      Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath

      Of Zephyr slew him,–Zephyr penitent,

      Who now, ere Phœbus mounts the firmament,

      Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.

      The archers too, upon a wider plain,

      Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft,

      And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft

      Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top,

      Call’d up

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