Read Ebook: Ardours and Endurances; Also A Faun's Holiday & Poems and Phantasies by Nichols Robert

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our feet, And up we start the grass to beat With fervent foot, drink, dance again, And, ever at the loud refrain Clashing our cups, dance on and on, Till the noontide lull is gone."

So join I them, and drink and sup, And fill again the great bowl up; And, drenched thus down, spin lusty tales Of topping bouts 'twixt men and whales; Of the East's Emperor who hath A pool of wine to be his bath; Of Hercules his thirst, and how He did all Ethiopia plough, And plant with vines, his thirst to sate. We will discuss the Ideal State, Whose sky is covered by a vine, Whose hills are cheese, whose rivers wine, Whose trees bear loaves brown, crisp and sweet, Whose citizens do nought but eat, But eat and drink, drink, eat, and snore, And eat again, and wish no more Than so to drink, snore, eat; who find In this true liberty of mind And true equality, in this Fraternity, law, earthly bliss. So swill again and yet again, Till a fire flushes all the brain And, trolling lustily and long, Each hearty throat bursts into song.

Avaunt, brow and visage pious: None but Bacchus boys come nigh us! Raise the bowl and shout his name: Io, Bacchus! for a flame Chafes in our blood, O Bromios! Fire no water e'er could quench, And its heat must scorify us If with wine we do not drench. Wherefore overbrim the cup: This to Jove now drink I up, Who upon thy first of days Sn?tched thee and c?wed thy natal blaze, Even as 'tis now the merry Strength of this thy vintaged berry, That the scorching danger stays.

To the vine now! let its golden Leaves about our brows be folden. To the swarthy hand that trims it! To the grape! the sun that dims it! To the pipe that doth embolden Purpled stamping feet to riot O'er the vatted winepress olden! To the cavern's depth, chill, quiet! Last to wine's own ruddy sprite, Wakes in rheumy eyes a light-- Ay, and ripens youth to man; Wine which more works than wisdom can; Wine that welcomes hardy morrows; Wine that turns to song our sorrows; Wine the only magian!

Deep now! every bowl enhances The world's beauty; see there dances In the sky the leaping sun! 'Nay, can thine eye catch but one?' 'Six now spin.' 'A seventh advances, Flares and vomits, swerves and blazes, Now bursts and countlessly it prances, Pulsing to my frantic paces!' 'I flame,--gyrate!' 'I shoot out heat!' 'My tricked speech trips, and trip my feet!' 'The earth runs round and heav'n is wheeling!' 'I sway; I reel.' 'Earth's wrecked and reeling!' 'Dance on.' 'Earth's gone.' 'All's white and clear!' 'Ah! Ah! Behind the blaze I hear The Oread's laughter pealing!'

Avaunt, grief! Descend, O holy Fierce Bacchic rapture, divine folly!

Thus will I sit and both amuse Until I rise and beg excuse: Off 'to El Raschid in Assyria' Or 'the Grand-Duchess of Illyria,' Or 'to ask the maiden moon Why one only of her shoon She left us last night in the sky, And not her silver self, and why She always climbs the self-same track? Lets no one ever see her back?'

But neither to the moon go I Or to the river gliding by, But to the woods, therein to move Among the quiet glades I love, Desiring nought but aye to see The beech, ash, oak, and chestnut tree.... Till I a nymph meet who persuades Me to the broadest of the glades, Around whose smooth and sunken space The far woods lie. For in this place, Deserted but for a mid-grove Of maiden trees, bower of the dove, Pan plays, and should the sylvans chance, Nymphs, fauns, and sylvans, join in dance.

The high-flung timbrels pulse and knock; We follow in a dancing flock, Touching each other's finger-tips, While from between our parted lips The solemn melodies repeat The rhythm of our shaken feet. Then faster! and the round we trace, Hair flowing from elated face, Eyes lit, breast bare, with lifted knees, And hands that toss as toss the trees.... And slow again ... with cumulate motion, As the long draw and plunge of ocean Bursting in a cloud of spray Up a white, deserted bay Of the sun-circled green Bermooths, Whose blistering sands the cool foam soothes.... Next the bewildering pipes may sing Some simple melody of spring, Whose cadences remember yet Sadly lost springs that we forget. To which as dances April rain On a still pool where leans no stain, Save of the cloud's pure splendour spread Gloriously overhead, Our fast-flickering feet shall twinkle, And our golden anklets tinkle, While fair arms in aery sleeves Shiver as the poplar's leaves.

And all the while shall Pan sit by And play, and pause, perhaps, to sigh, Viewing the scarce-moving skies, The hushed and glittering revelries, The infant moon, the slender trees Silvering to the shivery breeze, The fair, lorn dancers lemon-clad: The world fantastical and sad.

Thus may we dance the light away Of yet one more unmemoried day. But, the dance ended, I will go Beyond the reach of pipes that blow A sadness thrilling through my veins....

Such power Pan's grief hath to oppress, And Memory!--since now I guess Only too well that there must come Twilight, Calamity, and Doom.

For once I saw beneath an oak A bard so aged it seemed he woke That moment from a sleep of years And in his voice were sleep and tears.... Till, wide-eyed, he, raging, spake, Rocking as when woodlands shake Under the first urge of the wind, Whose roaring murk lightens behind.

He ceased ... and in the morning sky Zeus' anger threatened murmurously. I sped away. The lightning's sword Stabbed on the forest. But the word Abides with me. I feel its power Most darkly in the twilit hour, When Night's eternal shadow, cast Over earth hushed and pale and vast, Darkly foretells the soundless Night In which this orb, so green, so bright, Now spins, and which shall compass her When on her rondure nought shall stir But snow-whorls which the wind shall roll From the Equator to the Pole....

For Pan, the Unknown God, rules all. He shall outlive the funeral, Change, and decay, of many Gods, Until he, too, lets fall his rods Of viewless power upon that minute When Universe cowers at Infinite!

So far my mind runs, yet I see How little faun-philosophy Repays my heart would learn, not teach.... Better laugh long, lie, suck a peach Couched under tiger-lily flowers Which daze the low hot sun with showers Of fragrance, while the dusty bee Drones, fumbles, falls luxuriantly Within their throats; couched, turn a song Of flowers all the flowers among:

There is a vale beyond blue Ida's mount, THE FAUN'S And thither often would I, piping, stray AFTERNOON To listen to the music of a fount SONG. That spelt her tears out in a Dorian lay.

"Long, long ago," she wept, "Narcissus came Wandering down the sunny-shafted glade; Full weary was he of the lamp's gold flame Wavering beneath the dusky colonnade.

"For at the fall of night forth from the dim Gardens stole Echo; kneeling by his bed, With small sweet love-words she importuned him Who watched the lamp flame idle overhead.

"Dry was her hot flushed cheek and dark the fire In her great eyes; her lips roamed warm and light Over his arm; her murmurs of desire Mixed with the many murmurs of the night.

"In vain! He came to rest and sing with me And loll his fingers in the liquid cool, And drop slow tears, slow tears luxuriously Into the shadowy motion of the pool.

"With tongue scarce audible I wooed the lad, Whispering how beneath the drumming fall Slumbers a rapt, deep lake, so blue, so sad, That no fish swim it, nor about it call

"Delighting birds from green-bowered shore to shore, Nor doth the nightingale, when June begins And the moon mounts a pattin of bright or, Hymn her long sorrows and her lord's black sins.

"And the boy answered, answered me, and mourned The loveliness of Echo. 'Yet,' sighed he, 'My soul is fled, and long, thou knowest, bourned In what far dell none knoweth, love, but thee

"'Who farest thither! Sweeter to my ears Are thy quiet voices and the gentle breast Of rambling water sweeter than my dear's.' Then murmured I, 'Lean lower, love, and rest.'

"There was no sound through all the sleeping wood, Save one sharp cry from Echo, open-lipped, Who, as she followed, from afar did spy How to my arms my lover downward slipped.

"Softly I rocked him down into the pool, Shutting his ears to the loud torrents' din, And kissed and bore him through the portals cool, And laid him sleeping the blue halls within.

"So I returned; but never to me came Another as beautiful, nor shall come. Lonely I flow, and, flowing, lisp his name, Till the sky waste and all the earth be dumb."

So sang the spring, and, answering my look, Through the dark wood from the spring's fountain-head Flock upon flock of eyed narcissi shook, And the brook wept in sorrow for the dead.

Ah, Death again! nothing can fend Us from the Sibyl of the End, Whose delight 'tis to find new forms, Now in dull sighs, anon in storms, Singing, and ever of the same: The trusting heart betrayed; the flame Whirled in a night on cities proud; Lightnings from skies undimmed by cloud; The wide grave yawned before swift feet; The small success that brings defeat; The smiling lips and deadly eyes Of Destiny walking in disguise.

Sunken amid the twilight grass, I will watch the water pass, Weaving ever dimmer tales And dimmer as the evening pales.... Till from the calm the silent lark Drops to the meadows hushed and dark, While in the stagnant silver west, Above the tranquil poplars' crest, There glimmers through the murky bar The slowly climbing Hesperal Star.

Thus brooding by the hazy stream, I shall hear the water dream Tinkily on, and I shall see, As my eyes close quietly. Into a soft and long repose, The lone star like a silver rose Fade with me on the drifting stream Into the quiet night of dream.

I, too, a sudden tear have shed. For, ah! what voice is this can make The vagrant heart within me ache? That stirs an ancient tenderness, A new need to console, love, bless All things that 'neath this warm night sky Rejoice and suffer, age and die? Hunger is in my heart like bliss,-- I stretch my arms out and I kiss, Gathered in sad and sweet embrace, The whole world's dark and simple face.

Philomel herself falls dumb.

O tremulous voice! who is 't that shakes The night with fervour? Through the brakes Softly I thread ... emerge, and now Across the rising meadow's brow I glimpse, beside the farther wood, Under the shadow of its hood, A glimmering shape that does not move. It is the shepherd and his love: Close, close they stand, swooning and dim; Her shadowed face looks up at him, Her sighing breath his forehead warms; He sings, she leans within his arms.

Now the sweet siren of the woods, Philomel, passionately broods, Or, darkling, hymns love's wildest moods.

Dana?, fainting in her tower, Feels a sudden sun swim lower, Gasps beneath the starry shower.

Venus in the pomegranate grove Flutters like a fluttering dove Under young Adonis' love.

Leda longs until alight In the reeds those wings of white She hears beat the upper night.

Golden now the glowing moon, Diana over Endymion Downward bends as in a swoon.

Wherefore, since the gods agree, Youth is sweet and Night is free, And Love pleasure, should not we?

What joy is mine? what is 't I have: Immortal life? would 'twere a grave. Thus, thus to suffer world-without-end, No love, no hope, no goal, no friend!

And the proud, morning Centaur, how Fares he? what lot doth Fate allow?-- More wretched yet! to live and be Perfection's lone epitome.

I wander on, I fade in mist, O peopled World, and dost thou list? Pipe on, difficult pipes of mine; There is something in me divine, And it must out. For this was I Born, and I know I cannot die Until, perfected pipe, thou send My utmost: God, which is

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