Lyrics of Earth | Page 2

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 busy sparrow, primed with glee,
First preacher in the naked wilderness,?Piping an end to all the long distress?From every fence and every leafless tree.
Now with soft slight and viewless artifice
Winter's iron work is wondrously undone;?In all the little hollows cored with ice
The clear brown pools stand simmering in the sun,?Frail lucid worlds, upon whose tremulous floors
All day the wandering water-bugs at will,?Shy mariners whose oars are never still,?Voyage and dream about the heightening shores.
The bluebird, peeping from the gnarlèd thorn,
Prattles upon his frolic flute, or flings,?In bounding flight across the golden morn,
An azure gleam from off