  Dweller among leaves, and shining twilight boughs That fold cool arms about thine altar place, What joyous race Of gods dost serve with such unfaltering vows? Weave me a time-fringed tale Of slumbering, haunted trees, And star-sweet fragrances No day defiled; Of bowering nights innumerable, And nestling hours breath-nigh a dryad's heart That sleeping yet was wild With dream-beat that thou mad'st a part Of thy dawn-fluting; ay, and keep'st it still, Striving so late these godless woods to fill With undefeated strain, And in one hour build the old world again. Wast thou found singing when Diana drew Her skirts from the first night? Didst feel the sun-breath when the valleys grew Warm with the love of light, The mystery that made sweet The earth forever,—strange and undefined As life, as God, as this thy song complete That holds with me twin memories Of time ere men, And ere our ways Lay sundered with the abyss of air between? List, I will lay The world, my song, Deep in the heart of day, Day that is long As the ages dream or the stars delay! Keep thou from me, Sigh-throated man, Forever to be Under the songless wanderer's ban. I am of time That counteth no dawn; Thy Æons yet climb To skies I have won, Seeking for aye an unrisen sun! Before the moon, I creep beneath the trees, Even to the boughs whose lowest circling tips Whisper with the anemones Thick-strewn as though a cloud had made Its drifting way through spray and leafy braid And sunk with unremembering ease To humbler heaven upon the mossy heaps. And here a warmer flow Urges thy melody, yet keeps The cool of bowers; as might a rose blush through Its unrelinquished dew; Or bounteous heart that knows not woe, Put on the robe of sighs, and fain Would hold in love's surmise a neighbour's pain. Ah, I have wronged thee, sprite! So tender now thy song in flight, So sweet its lingerings are, It seems the liquid memory Of time when thou didst try Thy gleaning wing through human years, Of men who pray, the tears That hide the woman's star, The brave ascending fire That is youth's beacon and too soon his pyre,— Yea, all our striving, bateless and unseeing, That builds each day our Heaven new. More deep in time's unnearing blue, Farther and ever fleeing The dream that ever must pursue. Heart-need is sorest When the song dies: Come to the forest, Brother of the sighs. Heart-need is song-need, Brother, give me thine! Song-meed is heart-meed, Brother, take mine! I go the still way, Cover me with night; Thou goest the will way Into the light. Thou shall outrun; Bear then my guerdon, Song, to the sun! O little pagan with the heart of Christ, I go bewildered from thine altar place, These brooding boughs and grey-lit forest wings, Nor know if thou deniest My destiny and race, Man's goalward falterings, To sing the perfect joy that lay Along the path we missed somewhere, That led thee to thy home in air, While we, soil-creepers, bruise our way Toward heights and sunrise bounds That wings may know nor feet may win For all their scars, for all their wounds; Or have I heard within thy strain Not sorrow's self, but sorrowing That thou did'st seek the way more free, Nor took with us the trail of pain To life that knows what Life may be; And ere thou fall'st to silence long Would golden parting fling: Go, man, through death unto thy star; I journey not so far; My wings must fail e'en with my song. |
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