Читать книгу Poems - Edward Dowden - Страница 3

Hush, let the fountain murmur dim

Melodious secrets; stir no limb,

But lie along the marge and wait,

Till deep and pregnant as with fate,

Fine as a star-beam, crystal-clear,

Each ripple grows upon the ear.

This is that fountain seldom seen

By mortal wanderer,—Hippocrene,—

Where the virgins three times three,

Thy singing brood, Mnemosyne,

Loosen’d the girdle, and with grave

Pure joy their faultless bodies gave

To sacred pleasure of the wave.

Listen! the lapsing waters tell

The urgence uncontrollable

Which makes the trouble of their breast,

And bears them onward with no rest

To ampler skies and some grey plain

Sad with the tumbling of the main.

But see, a sidelong eddy slips

Back into the soft eclipse

Of day, while careless fate allows,

Darkling beneath still olive boughs;

Then with chuckle liquid sweet

Coils within its shy retreat;

This is mine, no wave of might,

But pure and live with glimmering light;

I dare not follow that broad flood

Of Poesy, whose lustihood

Nourishes mighty lands, and makes

Resounding music for their sakes;

I lie beside the well-head clear

With musing joy, with tender fear,

And choose for half a day to lean

Thus on my elbow where the green

Margin-grass and silver-white

Starry buds, the wind’s delight,

Thirsting steer, nor goat-hoof rude

Of the branch-sundering Satyr brood

Has ever pashed; now, now, I stoop,

And in hand-hollow dare to scoop

This scantling from the delicate stream;

It lies as quiet as a dream,

And lustrous in my curvèd hand.

Were it a crime if this were drain’d

By lips which met the noonday blue

Fiery and emptied of its dew?

Crown me with small white marish-flowers!

To the good Dæmon, and the Powers

Of this fair haunt I offer up

In unprofanèd lily-cup

Libations; still remains for me

A bird’s drink of clear Poesy;

Yet not as light bird comes and dips

A pert bill, but with reverent lips

I drain this slender trembling tide;

O sweet the coolness at my side,

And, lying back, to slowly pry

For spaces of the upper sky

Radiant ’twixt woven olive leaves;

And, last, while some fair show deceives

The closing eyes, to find a sleep

As full of healing and as deep

As on toil-worn Odysseus lay

Surge-swept to his Ionian bay.