Читать книгу Pan-Worship, and Other Poems - Eleanor Farjeon - Страница 3

Table of Contents

In Arcady there lies a crystal spring

Ring'd all about with green melodious reeds

Swaying seal'd music up and down the wind.

Here on its time-defacèd pedestal

The image of a half-forgotten God

Crumbles to its complete oblivion.

The faithful and invariable earth

Tilts at the shrine her sacrificial cup,

Spilling libations from the brim that runs

The golden nectar of her daffodils

And rivulets of summer-breathing flow'rs.

O evanescent temples built of man

To deities he honoured and dethroned!

Earth shoots a trail of her eternal vine

To crown the head that men have ceased to honour.

Beneath the coronal of leaf and lichen

The mocking smile upon the lips derides

Pan's lost dominion; but the pointed ears

Are keen and prick'd with old remember'd sounds.

All my breast aches with longing for the past!

Thou God of stone, I have a craving in me

For knowledge of thee as thou wert in old

Enchanted twilights in Arcadia.

Arcadia! it is the very music

Of the first spring-tide rippling its first wave

Over the naked, laughing baby world ...

Come again, thou sparkling spring-tide, come again,

Rush in and flood this autumn from my soul!

These waters welling at a dead God's shrine,

These happy waters bubbling limpid kisses,

Even with such bright and eager lips made wet

The hem of the earth's garment in the days

When earth was youthful and the Gods of Greece

In starry constellation crowned Olympus.

What drifting mists have veil'd the Olympian fires?

What of the Gods of Greece? and what of Greece?

O virgin Greece, standing with naked feet

In the morning dews of the world against the light

Of an infant dawn! old Greece, ever-young Greece,

The pagan in my blood, the instinct in me

That yearns back, back to nature-worship, cries

Aloud to thee! I would stoop to kiss those feet,

Sweet white wet feet washed with the earth's first dews:—

And leaning ear to grass I would re-catch

Echoes of footsteps sounding down dim ages

For ever the music once they made on thee:

The flaming step of the young Apollo when,

With limbs like light and golden locks toss'd back

On a smooth ivory shoulder, he avenged

His mother's wrongs on Python: the dreaming step

Of Hylas in the woods of Mysia

Leading to sleep beneath sweet sylvan waters:

The laughing step of untrammell'd Atalanta

Spurning the ground before her golden capture:

Child-Proserpina stepping like a flower,

And the singing step of Syrinx fleeing—what?

If thou couldst speak, neglected, sneering stone,

Thou wouldst know how to answer me. Wilt thou

Not speak?... How still it is!... The noise of the world

Is shut about with silence!... If I kneel,

Bend and adore, make sacrifice to thee,

If to thy long-deserted fane I bring

Tribute of milk and honey—then if I snap

That loveliest pipe of all at the spring's margin

And let the song of Syrinx from its hollow,

Nay, even the nymph's sweet self—O Pan, old Pan,

Shall I not see thee stirring in the stone,

Crack thy confinement, leap forth—be again?

I can believe it, master of bright streams,

Lord of green woodlands, king of sun-spread plains

And star-splashed hills and valleys drenched in moonlight!

And I shall see again a dance of Dryads

And airy shapes of Oreads circling free

To shy sweet pipings of fantastic fauns

And lustier-breathing satyrs ... God of Nature,

Thrice hailing thee by name with boisterous lungs

I will thrill thee back from the dead ages, thus:

Pan! Pan! O Pan! bring back thy reign again

Upon the earth!...

Numb pointed ears, ye hear

Only the wash and whisper of far waters,

The pale green waters of thin distant Springs

Under the pale green light of distant moons

Washing upon the shores of the old, old world

With a foam of flowers, a foam of whispering flowers....