 | Sounds and Sweet Airs |  |
72
A Pastoral Pipe.
Inscribed to the Unknown Player.
Dumb tides have borne me to the utmost bound
Of life's dark ocean, sleep; where on the shore
The drowsy billows break with wildering sound,
And cast me, waiflike, on this world once more.
I wake in Rome, and hear—what do I hear?
What voice? What herald of dawn, summoning me
To watch the sun o'er cold Clitumnus rise?
What bird, of morn's serene sad ecstacy
Piping divinely from his covert near,
Hails the rathe pageant of the kindling skies?
Of life's dark ocean, sleep; where on the shore
The drowsy billows break with wildering sound,
And cast me, waiflike, on this world once more.
I wake in Rome, and hear—what do I hear?
What voice? What herald of dawn, summoning me
To watch the sun o'er cold Clitumnus rise?
What bird, of morn's serene sad ecstacy
Piping divinely from his covert near,
Hails the rathe pageant of the kindling skies?
73
I reel, dazed, from oblivion's ebbing surge,
And shake the sluggard languor from each sense;
Yet still that music sounds, as I emerge
From night's enchantment, clearer, more intense.
It is the goatherd's pipe: against a plane
Faunlike he leans and plays, his resting goats
For only audience; tempering to his mood
Tunes that are memories, in whose plaintive notes
Arcadian Pan breathes, and the lingering strain
Of pastoral flutes in the old nymph-haunted wood.
And shake the sluggard languor from each sense;
Yet still that music sounds, as I emerge
From night's enchantment, clearer, more intense.
It is the goatherd's pipe: against a plane
Faunlike he leans and plays, his resting goats
For only audience; tempering to his mood
Tunes that are memories, in whose plaintive notes
Arcadian Pan breathes, and the lingering strain
Of pastoral flutes in the old nymph-haunted wood.
Campagna's noons have bronzed his lonely face,
Forgotten gods are templed in his breast,
The joys and sorrows of an ancient race
Are musical in him. But now, possest
With mænad's glee, his pipe to the young day
Flings a wild rustic dance, in challenge bright
Reiterated, varied with bold skill,
As he would summon to the Autumnal rite
The old vintage revellers—phantoms, footing gay
Their Bacchic measure on a vine-clad hill.
Forgotten gods are templed in his breast,
74
Are musical in him. But now, possest
With mænad's glee, his pipe to the young day
Flings a wild rustic dance, in challenge bright
Reiterated, varied with bold skill,
As he would summon to the Autumnal rite
The old vintage revellers—phantoms, footing gay
Their Bacchic measure on a vine-clad hill.
O sweet miraculous grace of homely things
To stir the pulses of a joy so deep!
This peasant's pipe sounds, and life's hidden springs
Leap up and sing in me. I sailed in sleep
Toward a strange land of legend, yet unknown.
Rome was a name; but I awake made free
Of all her sibylline realm—she bids me hail.
Priestess of all dead gods, I come to thee,
Thy child, whom thou dost now claim for thine own,
To worship them, ghosts of thy kingdom pale!
To stir the pulses of a joy so deep!
This peasant's pipe sounds, and life's hidden springs
Leap up and sing in me. I sailed in sleep
Toward a strange land of legend, yet unknown.
Rome was a name; but I awake made free
Of all her sibylline realm—she bids me hail.
75
Thy child, whom thou dost now claim for thine own,
To worship them, ghosts of thy kingdom pale!
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