Lyrics of Earth | Page 2

treasurer of immortal days,
I roam the glorious world with praise,

The hillsides and the woodland ways,
Till earth and I are one.
FOREST MOODS

There is singing of birds in the deep wet woods,
In the heart of the
listening solitudes,
Pewees, and thrushes, and sparrows, not few,

And all the notes of their throats are true.
The thrush from the innermost ash takes on
A tender dream of the
treasured and gone;
But the sparrow singeth with pride and cheer

Of the might and light of the present and here.
There is shining of flowers in the deep wet woods,
In the heart of the
sensitive solitudes,
The roseate bell and the lily are there,
And
every leaf of their sheaf is fair.
Careless and bold, without dream of woe,
The trilliums scatter their
flags snow;
But the pale wood-daffodil covers her face,
Agloom
with the doom of a sorrowful race.
THE RETURN OF THE YEAR
Again the warm bare earth, the noon
That hangs upon her healing
scars,
The midnight round, the great red moon,
The mother with her
brood of stars,
The mist-rack and the wakening rain
Blown soft in many a forest way,

The yellowing elm-trees, and again
The blood-root in its sheath of
gray.
The vesper-sparrow's song, the stress
Of yearning notes that gush and
stream,
The lyric joy, the tenderness,
And once again the dream!
the dream!
A touch of far-off joy and power,
A something it is life to learn,

Comes back to earth, and one short hour
The glamours of the gods
return.
This life's old mood and cult of care
Falls smitten by an older truth,

And the gray world wins back to her
The rapture of her vanished

youth.
Dead thoughts revive, and he that heeds
Shall hear, as by a spirit led,

A song among the golden reeds:
"The gods are vanished but not
dead!"
For one short hour; unseen yet near,
They haunt us, a forgotten mood,

A glory upon mead and mere,
A magic in the leafless wood.
At morning we shall catch the glow
Of Dian's quiver on the hill,

And somewhere in the glades I know
That Pan is at his piping still.
FAVORITES OF PAN
Once, long ago, before the gods
Had left this earth, by stream and
forest glade,
Where the first plough upturned the clinging sods,
Or
the lost shepherd strayed,
Often to the tired listener's ear
There came at noonday or beneath the
stars
A sound, he knew not whence, so sweet and clear,
That all his
aches and scars
And every brooded bitterness,
Fallen asunder from his soul took
flight,
Like mist or darkness yielding to the press
Of an unnamed
delight,--
A sudden brightness of the heart,
A magic fire drawn down from
Paradise,
That rent the cloud with golden gleam apart,--
And far
before his eyes
The loveliness and calm of earth
Lay like a limitless dream remote
and strange,
The joy, the strife, the triumph and the mirth,
And the
enchanted change;
And so he followed the sweet sound,
Till faith had traversed her
appointed span,
And murmured as he pressed the sacred ground:
"It

is the note of Pan!"
Now though no more by marsh or stream
Or dewy forest sounds the
secret reed--
For Pan is gone--Ah yet, the infinite dream
Still lives
for them that heed.
In April, when the turning year
Regains its pensive youth, and a soft
breath
And amorous influence over marsh and mere
Dissolves the
grasp of death,
To them that are in love with life,
Wandering like children with
untroubled eyes,
Far from the noise of cities and the strife,
Strange
flute-like voices rise
At noon and in the quiet of the night
From every watery waste; and in
that hour
The same strange spell, the same unnamed delight,

Enfolds them in its power.
An old-world joyousness supreme,
The warmth and glow of an
immortal balm,
The mood-touch of the gods, the endless dream,

The high lethean calm.
They see, wide on the eternal way,
The services of earth, the life of
man;
And, listening to the magic cry they say:
"It is the note of
Pan!"
For, long ago, when the new strains
Of hostile hymns and conquering
faiths grew keen,
And the old gods from their deserted fanes,
Fled
silent and unseen,
So, too, the goat-foot Pan, not less
Sadly obedient to the mightier
hand,
Cut him new reeds, and in a sore distress
Passed out from
land to land;
And lingering by each haunt he knew,
Of fount or sinuous stream or
grassy marge,
He set the syrinx to his lips, and blew
A note

divinely large;
And all around him on the wet
Cool earth the frogs came up, and with
a smile
He took them in his hairy hands, and set
His mouth to theirs
awhile,
And blew into their velvet throats;
And ever from that hour the frogs
repeat
The murmur of Pan's pipes, the notes,
And answers strange
and sweet;
And they that hear them are renewed
By knowledge in some god-like
touch conveyed,
Entering again into the eternal mood,
Wherein the
world was made.
THE MEADOW
Here when the cloudless April days begin,
And the quaint crows flock thicker day by day,
Filling the forests
with a pleasant din,
And the soiled snow creeps secretly away,
Comes the small