University of Virginia Library

There, where yon sunbeam lingers down the glade,
Stands, in the yellow light of ebbing day,
A wingèd Shape of perfect loveliness:
A boy in look and limb, yet self-sustained
By god-like power; dark his orbed eyes,
His cheek sun-coloured, golden his long hair.
Athwart his shoulders, charged with silver shafts
Hangs a light quiver, and an ivory bow
Fills one small hand. But see! he passes on,
Till, by a fountain, in whose hollow depth
Of liquid splendour, dreams eternally
The beautiful mock-heaven, he drops diffused,
As one that lays him down for happy rest;
But Care lies with him in the embedding grass.
Here, hour on hour before his listless eyes,
The Fountain spreads its shadowy, pictured world,
Its silver clouds that float o'er tent-like trees,
With tremulous green leaves, and boles thick-patched
With lichens black and red; its fairy birds,
Its wavering flowers, and living swarms, like flowers,
Lily or rose or gorgeous butterfly,
Or emerald insect imaged in its wave.
But all in vain that lovely mirror'd world,
That sweet false heaven and earth make mute appeal
To those tranced eyes that see and do not see,
But still dream on. At length a joyous laugh
Broke the clear silence, and the Dreamer rose
Sudden as one who leaps up from a dream.
“And who,” he cried, “profanes my solitude?
“Come forth, come forth, Intruder, when I call,
“From thy green lair of woven boughs, come forth!”
Among the woven boughs a rustle ran,
And mischievously mirthful, thro' the leaves
Peered a broad face with pleasure-puckered mouth,
From whose vast opening the wild laughter came
Unbidden, till victorious o'er his glee,
The Faun reshaped his voice to words like these:
“Fair cause for mirth, dread Eros, hath thy Faun,
“For see I not the Child of frolic lie
“Forlorn and sad, as tho' Love's self were struck
“By Love's own shaft.” So spake the wicked Faun,
Laughing at Eros, yet half fearing one
Greater than he by an immortal birth—
For Love is of the Heaven. Uplifting then
A shaft, and leaning on the ivory bow,
The child of Aphrodite answered him:
“Friend of Silenus! even to the Gods
Feasting on nectar in ambrosial halls
“Comes Care, that casts a shadow as he comes,
“And Love, whose home is where the Gods abide,
“Yet dwells with men and saddens at their grief;
“And thus it chanced that on my boding heart
“Thy laughter fell unwelcome, as in Spring,
“Falls on young grass and budding leaves the snow.
“But hear my tale, and hearing, counsel me—
“For the high Gods may learn of lowly Fauns.
“Tho' Fauns must die, and Gods live evermore.
“Here, therefore, in wise converse will we sit
“Under the shadow of this antique tree.”

Under the shadow of that antique tree
Lounged the blithe Faun, and thus the God began:

“There is a maiden in this lovely isle
“That with her grief and beauty touches me;
“Once wilful grace was hers, with frolic love
“Of freedom, yet she listened evermore
“To gentle fears that beat about her heart,
“As some white woman, bathing in lone seas,
“Hearkens to every faint and far-off sound.
“She loved, and yet I think it was not love.
“For that was never love that loveth all—
“The birds that balance on the slender spray,
“Bent like a sickle held athwart the sky;
“The lamb that tracked her footsteps o'er the thyme
“And gambolled as she went; the butting goat
“With silky hair and beard of silver-grey;
“The lowing heifer with a breath as sweet
“As tho' she fed on violets; the bright fish
“That leaps half out of his pale element,
“Were dear to her; and dear each tree and flower.
“Now such a general lover pleased me not:
“A woman's heart, I said, to nobler love
“Is set; to nobler love and nobler cares,
“And such a love should Ariadne know.
“Such love ere long she knew. Fair Grecian ships,
“Led by Prince Theseus, anchored on these shores,
“And who so fit to teach young hearts to love
“As that imperial Shape? For many days
“He dwelt with Minos, as kings dwell with kings.
“Meantime Love fell upon the maiden's heart,
“Like sunrise over snow. Then life was sweet,
“And sky and earth and every common thing
“Seemed beautiful, as if the eternal Gods
“Had newly fashioned them, and all the world
“Were only made for the sweet sake of love.
“But after rise and set of many suns,
“The Prince, impatient for heroic deeds,
“And restless as a wind that veers and shifts
“Until it sets full-blowing down the land,
“Called by the Gods, forsook the Cretan shore,
“And Ariadne sits forlorn and sighs
“For Theseus and the golden days of love.”

Here Eros ended, and the Faun replied:
“O child of Aphrodite! listen thou!
“For Gods that die not learn of dying Fauns.
“One summer eve, before the Silver Age,
“Silenus, sitting among purple grapes,
“Sung to the listening Fauns that held his cup:
“I heard, and I remember what he sang.
“‘The years shall come,’ he said, ‘ah! happy years!
“When, from an isle in the Ionian seas,
“The Gods shall bear to their refulgent homes
“The loveliest woman ever eyes beheld;
“And he whose aweful life is in the world,
“Whose voice comes whispering softly to my song,
“He whom we serve, shall weave a starry braid
“For her white brows and crown her heart with love.’”

So spake the Faun, and Eros made reply,
While joy ran brightening over look and limb,
Until divinity seemed more divine:
“No lovelier tale, O Faun, the Sirens sing
“To ships that thro' dissolving moonbeams sail
“On southern seas. But such high oracle
“Behoves me bear to where beyond the sun
“Dwells my great mother; for no might hath love
“Where beauty is not, and of all the Gods
“'Tis only the queen Aphrodite gives
“What makes life fairest.”

Eros ending thus,
The Faun replied: “Time, in his silent lapse,
“That mellows all the harvests of the world,
“Will heap our year with fruit; but now farewell,
“And to thy mother's halls Hesperian sail
“With all fair winds for pilots, while thy Faun
“Visits the pastoral kingdom of his liege;
“For ere the sun go down he summons us,
“Fauns, Satyrs, and Sileni to his court,
“Where to the sound of horns and castanets,
“And pipes that bubble o'er with liquid noise,
“The dance shall circle till the first pale star.”
This said, the Faun dishevelled with delight,
Flew headlong from the spot, and as he flew
Laughed till the forest echoes answered him,
And the quaint children of the woods were roused,
And thro' green loopholes thrust their furry ears.
But Eros watched the Faun, as fast he flew,
Down dell and dingle, then unfolding slow,
And slowly balancing with even poise,
The gold and purple oarage of his wings,
One moment looked around, the next rode high
On the smooth stream of the uplifting wind,
And like a star that glides across the night,
Flew fading down the west and disappeared.

But lo! what fair sweet Sorrow comes this way?
What phantom pale of deadly loveliness,
Parting the thick boughs of the tangled wood,
Walks ankle-deep in moss and primrose leaves?
Misery in human form were not more sad,
And Deity were scarce more beautiful.
Nor right nor left she moves, but noiselessly
Holds on her gliding path to yonder lake,
That gleams like some vast eye. The writhing boughs
Of gnarled trees all blotched with lichens gray,
Drop over it a solid roof of leaves.
Mid rushes tall, furred reeds, and blistering plants,
Stiff with a monstrous and unnatural growth,
Sits Silence, with one finger on her lip,
And there the shapeless family of Night,
Suspicion, Fear, and Solitude abide;
While, round and round in mystic circle rang'd,
Grey trees, the giant fathers of the wood,
Keep endless watch. Still, pale and passionless,
Hang from the branches of the regal oak
Visions that wait on kings, while, calm and fair,
In the tall elms sit dreams that lovers have.
Hither, like one that in unconsciousness,
Yet conscious, moves, she steer'd her darkling way,
And, feeling all the witchery in the air,
Lay down within the ring of mystic trees,
And, lull'd by countless murmurs, fell asleep.
Then a fair Dream in self-obscuring light
Left its green rest, and, folding rainbow wings
Over its cloudy semblance, near her stood,
While thus, a feeble voice, like that which haunts
The breezes when we fear we know not what,
Low whispering came: “I from my forest realms
“By Zeus, who sends all dreams, am sent to thee
“To build up in the aëry world of Sleep
“Thy Past and thy To-come.” The Dreamer look'd
And saw a strange fair world, a world like ours,
But wrought of frailer elements, where moved
Such shapes as men half think that they have seen,
Yet know not when, nor where, nor what they are.
She gazed, till fairer far than Day, appeared
One like Apollo when, on Delos Isle,
Self-risen on the breast of the great sea,
He leapt to light and glorified the earth,
And glorified the ocean and the air.
Near, and half fronting this resplendent Form,
Clothed in soft lights, one like the Evening stood.
Not Beauty's self more lovely, when alone,
She woke the royal Shepherd in his tent,
And brightened all the murmuring summer air,
That flowed round fountained Ida night and day.
One look, one smile, one short, swift, sobbing cry,
One clasping of fair arms round necks as fair,
When lo! the vision darkened suddenly,
And on the level shore of their delight
Broke, like a wave, a cold imperious voice:
“O waste not thou in love-dreams (thus it cried)
“Hours that belong to the majestic gods,
“But leave the lovely maiden of thy thoughts,
“And with heroic deeds enrich the world.”
Even as it spake o'er Ariadne crept
A sudden shiver, such as in broad noon,
When summer days are longest, visits men,
As some cold hand had touched them unawares.
But now appeared a stately ship afloat,
And Fancy heard the shouts of answering men,
The whistle and the cry of mariners,
With splash of wave and strain of creaking mast,
And noise of fluttering sails and coiling ropes.
She saw the oars uplifted; she beheld
One like a king ascend the vessel's side;
She heard him speak, she saw him raise his hand,
She knew he gave the signal to depart.
Then, as the white waves flashed around the keel,
A paler image than herself appeared,
That, like herself, where sea and water met,
Gazed, as the vessel dwarfed her snowy wings,
Until it passed beyond the utmost star
Which the sea touches, running round the sky.
Again the dream was changed, and lo! a shape,
Like what we deem of God or Genius, came,
Apparelled with the thousand shifting lights
Of rainbow clouds that gleam along the west
When the dead sun droops his resplendent head
And falls all fire into the burning waves.
He knelt, and leaning o'er her as he knelt
Whispered her name. She did but lift her eyes,
And, as a cloud all pale and colourless
Is touched by the gold fingers of the Morn,
And smiles for that fresh gladness, so her face,
Faded and wan before, now brightened fast,
And flushed with a new daybreak of delight,
And from the dreamer's parted lips there went
A murmuring cry, and the glad echo ran
Trembling thro' all the airy caves of Sleep,
Till her eyes saw the light. She rose, she stood,
And fixed as by some strong enchanter's spell,
Gazed down the glimmering length of woven boughs
That arch on arch, thro' all the emerald aisle,
Wavered and floated like a fairy bridge,
That woos to far-off amber palaces
Beyond the sunset. Fountains, trees, and flowers,
With all the mighty depth of forest shade,
Transfigured shone; low, in the kindling west,
The sun was setting, and the sylvan floor,
Where lights and shadows crossed and intercrossed,
Lay like the fields Elysian, and the air
Was haunted with the breath of vernal flowers,
And the blind joy that hides within the breeze
When lilac blossoms fall; while, more remote,
The ocean murmured, like a thousand shells,
That at the feast of Gods, in sapphire halls
At twilight seen beneath the glassy sea,
Harmonious play and calm the smiling waves.