Grass of Parnassus | Page 5

river,
The faint
light fade, and the wan stars quiver,
Twain grown one in the solitude.
ANOTHER WAY.
Come to me in my dreams, and then,
One saith, I shall be well again,

For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the
day.
Nay, come not THOU in dreams, my sweet,
With shadowy robes, and
silent feet,
And with the voice, and with the eyes
That greet me in a
soft surprise.
Last night, last night, in dreams we met,
And how, to-day, shall I
forget,
Or how, remembering, restrain
Mine incommunicable pain?
Nay, where thy land and people are,
Dwell thou remote, apart, afar,

Nor mingle with the shapes that sweep
The melancholy ways of
Sleep.
But if, perchance, the shadows break,
If dreams depart, and men
awake,
If face to face at length we see,
Be thine the voice to
welcome me.
HESPEROTHEN
By the example of certain Grecian mariners, who, being safely returned
from the war about Troy, leave yet again their old lands and gods,
seeking they know not what, and choosing neither to abide in the fair
Phaeacian island, nor to dwell and die with the Sirens, at length end
miserably in a desert country by the sea, is set forth the Vanity of
Melancholy. And by the land of Phaeacia is to be understood the place
of Art and of fair Pleasures; and by Circe's Isle, the place of bodily
delights, whereof men, falling aweary, attain to Eld, and to the darkness
of that age. Which thing Master Francoys Rabelais feigned, under the

similitude of the Isle of the Macraeones.
THE SEEKERS FOR PHAEACIA.
There is a land in the remotest day,
Where the soft night is born, and
sunset dies;
The eastern shore sees faint tides fade away,
That wash
the lands where laughter, tears, and sighs
Make life,--the lands below
the blue of common skies.
But in the west is a mysterious sea,
(What sails have seen it, or what
shipmen known?)
With coasts enchanted where the Sirens be,
With
islands where a Goddess walks alone,
And in the cedar trees the
magic winds make moan.
Eastward the human cares of house and home,
Cities, and ships, and
unknown gods, and loves;
Westward, strange maidens fairer than the
foam,
And lawless lives of men, and haunted groves,
Wherein a
god may dwell, and where the Dryad roves.
The gods are careless of the days and death
Of toilsome men, beyond
the western seas;
The gods are heedless of their painful breath,
And
love them not, for they are not as these;
But in the golden west they
live and lie at ease.
Yet the Phaeacians well they love, who live
At the light's limit,
passing careless hours,
Most like the gods; and they have gifts to give,

Even wine, and fountains musical, and flowers,
And song, and if
they will, swift ships, and magic powers.
It is a quiet midland; in the cool
Of the twilight comes the god,
though no man prayed,
To watch the maids and young men beautiful

Dance, and they see him, and are not afraid,
For they are neat of
kin to gods, and undismayed.
Ah, would the bright red prows might bring us nigh
The dreamy isles
that the Immortals keep!
But with a mist they hide them wondrously,


And far the path and dim to where they sleep,--
The loved, the
shadowy lands, along the shadowy deep.
A SONG OF PHAEACIA.
The languid sunset, mother of roses,
Lingers, a light on the magic
seas,
The wide fire flames, as a flower uncloses,
Heavy with odour,
and loose to the breeze.
The red rose clouds, without law or leader,
Gather and float in the
airy plain;
The nightingale sings to the dewy cedar,
The cedar
scatters his scent to the main.
The strange flowers' perfume turns to singing,
Heard afar over
moonlit seas:
The Siren's song, grown faint in winging,
Falls in
scent on the cedar trees.
As waifs blown out of the sunset, flying,
Purple, and rosy, and grey,
the birds
Brighten the air with their wings; their crying
Wakens a
moment the weary herds.
Butterflies flit from the fairy garden,
Living blossoms of flying
flowers;
Never the nights with winter harden,
Nor moons wax keen
in this land of ours.
Great fruits, fragrant, green and golden,
Gleam in the green, and
droop and fall;
Blossom, and bud, and flower unfolden,
Swing, and
cling to the garden wall.
Deep in the woods as twilight darkens,
Glades are red with the
scented fire;
Far in the dells the white maid hearkens,
Song and
sigh of the heart's desire.
Ah, and as moonlight fades in morning,
Maiden's song in the matin
grey,
Faints as the first bird's note, a warning,
Wakes and wails to
the new-born day.

The waking song and the dying measure
Meet, and the waxing and
waning light
Meet, and faint with the hours of pleasure,
The rose of
the sea and the sky is white.
THE DEPARTURE FROM PHAEACIA.
The Phaeacians.
Why from the dreamy meadows,
More fair than any dream,
Why
seek ye for the shadows
Beyond the ocean stream?
Through straits of storm and peril,
Through firths unsailed before,

Why make you for the sterile,
The dark