ields the goat-foot never trod!

THE POET

Yet from his eyes the mirth a moment glanced
To which the streams of old Arcadia danced;
And on his tongue still lay the childish lore
Of that lost world for which you hope no more.

THE LADY

Tell me!--from where I watched I saw his face,
And his hands moving with a rustic grace,
Caught too the alien sweetness of his speech,
But sound alone, not sense, my ears could reach.

THE POET

He asked if we in England ever heard
The tiny beasts, half insect and half bird,
That neither eat nor sleep, but die content
When they in endless song their strength have spent.

THE LADY

Cicalas! how the name enchants me back
To the grey olives and the dust-white track!
Was there a story then?--I have forgot,
Or else by chance my Umbrians told it not.

{184}

THE POET

Lover of music, you at least should know
That these were men in ages long ago,--
Ere music was,--and then the Muses came,
And love of song took hold on them like flame.

THE LADY

Yes, I remember now the voice that speaks--
Most living still of all the deathless Greeks--
Yet tell me--how they died divinely mad,
And of the Muses what reward they had.

THE POET

They are reborn on earth, and from the first
They know not sleep, they hunger not nor thirst
Summer with glad Cicala's song they fill,
Then die, and go to haunt the Muses' Hill.

THE LADY

They are reborn indeed! and rightly you
The far-heard echo of their music knew!
Pray now to Pan, since you too, it would seem,
Were there with Phaedrus, by Ilissus' stream.

THE POET

Beloved Pan, and all ye gods whose grace
For ever haunts our short life's resting-place,
Outward and inward make me one true whole,
And grant me beauty in the inmost soul!

{185}

THE LADY

And thou, O Night, O starry Queen of Air,
Remember not my blind and faithless prayer!
Let me too live, let me too sing again,
Since Beauty wanders still the ways of men.

{186}

_The Faun_

Yesterday I thought to roam
Idly through the fields of home,
And I came at morning's end
To our brook's familiar bend.
There I raised my eyes, and there,
Shining through an ampler air,
Folded in by hills of blue
Such as Wessex never knew,
Changed as in a waking dream
Flowed the well-remembered stream.

Now a line of wattled pale
Fenced