 | Wild honey from various thyme |  |
50
REVEILLE
Come to us, O Dionysus,
From the Alcyonian water!
By the lake the spring-tide trumpets
With their cavernous entreaty,
With their tingling, sunstruck music,
Summon thee across the ripples,
Through the depths and lowest shadows,
Till they reach the gulf of Hades,
And thine ears with slumber soulless.
Let the trumpets roar their sunlight
To thy sleep and draw thee sternly
From the under hollows upward!
From the Alcyonian water!
By the lake the spring-tide trumpets
With their cavernous entreaty,
With their tingling, sunstruck music,
Summon thee across the ripples,
Through the depths and lowest shadows,
Till they reach the gulf of Hades,
And thine ears with slumber soulless.
Let the trumpets roar their sunlight
To thy sleep and draw thee sternly
From the under hollows upward!
And in tribute to the warder
Of the dead this lamb, entwisted
With the stars and clumps of blossom
From the fields in earliest flowering,
By our hand is cast a victim,
To the lake, 'mid blast of trumpets.
None of all the lambs that speckle
With bare whiteness hill and valley
Do we offer, but a black one,
Black as if by smoke commended.
Dionysus, it is drowning:
We await thee by the water!
Of the dead this lamb, entwisted
With the stars and clumps of blossom
From the fields in earliest flowering,
By our hand is cast a victim,
To the lake, 'mid blast of trumpets.
51
With bare whiteness hill and valley
Do we offer, but a black one,
Black as if by smoke commended.
Dionysus, it is drowning:
We await thee by the water!
Argives, see, the waves unbroken,
And the reeds an army silent;
Not a swan with breezy plumage
On the waves that drank their victim!
Sullen water, watery meadows
Wait for raciness of purpose;
Every vale and bank deploring
That their hour is unaccomplished.
Dionysus, Dionysus!
Solidly the trumpets clamour,
With demand the gates of Pluto
Dare not frustrate in their hatred.
And the reeds an army silent;
Not a swan with breezy plumage
On the waves that drank their victim!
Sullen water, watery meadows
Wait for raciness of purpose;
Every vale and bank deploring
That their hour is unaccomplished.
Dionysus, Dionysus!
Solidly the trumpets clamour,
With demand the gates of Pluto
Dare not frustrate in their hatred.
Fixedly the trumpets thunder
Deep-toned over the pale reaches;
And we call with mourning passion,
As they call the dead that lose them:
“Come to us, return, belovèd!”
Argives, see, within the ripple
Rhythm of a light is playing;
And the sky, behold, is lucid
As the light that chimes its current
With the current of the water,
So that never swan more bravely
Measured out her splendid waftage.
Deep-toned over the pale reaches;
And we call with mourning passion,
As they call the dead that lose them:
52
Argives, see, within the ripple
Rhythm of a light is playing;
And the sky, behold, is lucid
As the light that chimes its current
With the current of the water,
So that never swan more bravely
Measured out her splendid waftage.
Argives, how the spangles brighten!
Flashing trumpets, draw the presence
In the water to our vineyards,
To our farmsteads and bleak meadows!
In that light upon the water
Is our springtide, our affiance,
Buoyancy of heart and herbage,
Touch and redolence of freedom.
Veil your eyes, for none may see him
Reach the Alcyonian pastures.
Dionysus, O Belovèd!—
Blind, bright trumpets, blow him welcome!
Flashing trumpets, draw the presence
In the water to our vineyards,
To our farmsteads and bleak meadows!
In that light upon the water
Is our springtide, our affiance,
Buoyancy of heart and herbage,
Touch and redolence of freedom.
Veil your eyes, for none may see him
Reach the Alcyonian pastures.
Dionysus, O Belovèd!—
Blind, bright trumpets, blow him welcome!
| Wild honey from various thyme | |