| SUMMER, and noon, and a splendour of silence, felt, | |
| Seen, and heard of the spirit within the sense. | |
| Soft through the frondage the shades of the sunbeams melt, | |
| Sharp through the foliage the shafts of them, keen and dense, | |
| Cleave, as discharged from the string of the God’s bow, tense | 5 |
| As a war-steed’s girth, and bright as a warrior’s belt. | |
| Ah, why should an hour that is heaven for an hour pass hence? | |
| |
| I dare not sleep for delight of the perfect hour, | |
| Lest God be wroth that his gift should be scorned of man. | |
| The face of the warm bright world is the face of a flower, | 10 |
| The word of the wind and the leaves that the light winds fan | |
| As the word that quickened at first into flame, and ran, | |
| Creative and subtle and fierce with invasive power, | |
| Through darkness and cloud, from the breath of the one God, Pan. | |
| |
| The perfume of earth possessed by the sun pervades | 15 |
| The chaster air that he soothes but with sense of sleep. | |
| Soft, imminent, strong as desire that prevails and fades, | |
| The passing noon that beholds not a cloudlet weep | |
| Imbues and impregnates life with delight more deep | |
| Than dawn or sunset or moonrise on lawns or glades | 20 |
| Can shed from the skies that receive it and may not keep. | |
| |
| The skies may hold not the splendour of sundown fast; | |
| It wanes into twilight as dawn dies down into day. | |
| And the moon, triumphant when twilight is overpast, | |
| Takes pride but awhile in the hours of her stately sway. | 25 |
| But the might of the noon, though the light of it pass away, | |
| Leaves earth fulfilled of desires and of dreams that last; | |
| But if any there be that hath sense of them none can say. | |
| |
| For if any there be that hath sight of them, sense, or trust | |
| Made strong by the might of a vision, the strength of a dream, | 30 |
| His lips shall straiten and close as a dead man’s must, | |
| His heart shall be sealed as the voice of a frost-bound stream. | |
| For the deep mid mystery of light and of heat that seem | |
| To clasp and pierce dark earth, and enkindle dust, | |
| Shall a man’s faith say what it is? or a man’s guess deem? | 35 |
| |
| Sleep lies not heavier on eyes that have watched all night | |
| Than hangs the heat of the noon on the hills and trees. | |
| Why now should the haze not open, and yield to sight | |
| A fairer secret than hope or than slumber sees? | |
| I seek not heaven with submission of lips and knees, | 40 |
| With worship and prayer for a sign till it leap to light: | |
| I gaze on the gods about me, and call on these. | |
| |
| I call on the gods hard by, the divine dim powers | |
| Whose likeness is here at hand, in the breathless air, | |
| In the pulseless peace of the fervid and silent flowers, | 45 |
| In the faint sweet speech of the waters that whisper there. | |
| Ah, what should darkness do in a world so fair? | |
| The bent-grass heaves not, the couch-grass quails not or cowers; | |
| The wind’s kiss frets not the rowan’s or aspen’s hair. | |
| |
| But the silence trembles with passion of sound suppressed, | 50 |
| And the twilight quivers and yearns to the sunward, wrung | |
| With love as with pain; and the wide wood’s motionless breast | |
| Is thrilled with a dumb desire that would fain find tongue | |
| And palpitates, tongueless as she whom a man-snake stung, | |
| Whose heart now heaves in the nightingale, never at rest | 55 |
| Nor satiated ever with song till her last be sung. | |
| |
| Is it rapture or terror that circles me round, and invades | |
| Each vein of my life with hope—if it be not fear? | |
| Each pulse that awakens my blood into rapture fades, | |
| Each pulse that subsides into dread of a strange thing near | 60 |
| Requickens with sense of a terror less dread than dear. | |
| Is peace not one with light in the deep green glades | |
| Where summer at noonday slumbers? Is peace not here? | |
| |
| The tall thin stems of the firs, and the roof sublime | |
| That screens from the sun the floor of the steep still wood, | 65 |
| Deep, silent, splendid, and perfect and calm as time, | |
| Stand fast as ever in sight of the night they stood, | |
| When night gave all that moonlight and dewfall could. | |
| The dense ferns deepen, the moss glows warm as the thyme: | |
| The wild heath quivers about me: the world is good. | 70 |
| |
| Is it Pan’s breath, fierce in the tremulous maidenhair, | |
| That bids fear creep as a snake through the woodlands, felt | |
| In the leaves that it stirs not yet, in the mute bright air, | |
| In the stress of the sun? For here has the great God dwelt: | |
| For hence were the shafts of his love or his anger dealt. | 75 |
| For here has his wrath been fierce as his love was fair, | |
| When each was as fire to the darkness its breath bade melt. | |
| |
| Is it love, is it dread, that enkindles the trembling noon, | |
| That yearns, reluctant in rapture that fear has fed, | |
| As man for woman, as woman for man? Full soon, | 80 |
| If I live, and the life that may look on him drop not dead, | |
| Shall the ear that hears not a leaf quake hear his tread, | |
| The sense that knows not the sound of the deep day’s tune | |
| Receive the God, be it love that he brings or dread. | |
| |
| The naked noon is upon me: the fierce dumb spell, | 85 |
| The fearful charm of the strong sun’s imminent might, | |
| Unmerciful, steadfast, deeper than seas that swell, | |
| Pervades, invades, appals me with loveless light, | |
| With harsher awe than breathes in the breath of night. | |
| Have mercy, God who art all! For I know thee well, | 90 |
| How sharp is thine eye to lighten, thine hand to smite. | |
| |
| The whole wood feels thee, the whole air fears thee: but fear | |
| So deep, so dim, so sacred, is wellnigh sweet. | |
| For the light that hangs and broods on the woodlands here, | |
| Intense, invasive, intolerant, imperious, and meet | 95 |
| To lighten the works of thine hands and the ways of thy feet, | |
| Is hot with the fire of the breath of thy life, and dear | |
| As hope that shrivels or shrinks not for frost or heat. | |
| |
| Thee, thee the supreme dim godhead, approved afar, | |
| Perceived of the soul and conceived of the sense of man | 100 |
| We scarce dare love, and we dare not fear: the star | |
| We call the sun, that lit us when life began | |
| To brood on the world that is thine by his grace for a span, | |
| Conceals and reveals in the semblance of things that are | |
| Thine immanent presence, the pulse of thy heart’s life, Pan. | 105 |
| |
| The fierce mid noon that wakens and warms the snake | |
| Conceals thy mercy, reveals thy wrath: and again | |
| The dew-bright hour that assuages the twilight brake | |
| Conceals thy wrath and reveals thy mercy: then | |
| Thou art fearful only for evil souls of men | 110 |
| That feel with nightfall the serpent within them wake, | |
| And hate the holy darkness on glade and glen. | |
| |
| Yea, then we know not and dream not if ill things be, | |
| Or if aught of the work of the wrong of the world be thine. | |
| We hear not the footfall of terror that treads the sea, | 115 |
| We hear not the moan of winds that assail the pine: | |
| We see not if shipwreck reign in the storm’s dim shrine; | |
| If death do service and doom bear witness to thee | |
| We see not,—know not if blood for thy lips be wine. | |
| |
| But in all things evil and fearful that fear may scan, | 120 |
| As in all things good, as in all things fair that fall, | |
| We know thee present and latent, the lord of man; | |
| In the murmuring of doves, in the clamouring of winds that call | |
| And wolves that howl for their prey; in the mid-night’s pall, | |
| In the naked and nymph-like feet of the dawn, O Pan, | 125 |
| And in each life living, O thou the God who art all. | |
| |
| Smiling and singing, wailing and wringing of hands, | |
| Laughing and weeping, watching and sleeping, still | |
| Proclaim but and prove but thee, as the shifted sands | |
| Speak forth and show but the strength of the sea’s wild will | 130 |
| That sifts and grinds them as grain in the storm-wind’s mill. | |
| In thee is the doom that falls and the doom that stands: | |
| The tempests utter thy word, and the stars fulfil. | |
| |
| Where Etna shudders with passion and pain volcanic | |
| That rend her heart as with anguish that rends a man’s, | 135 |
| Where Typho labours, and finds not his thews Titanic, | |
| In breathless torment that ever the flame’s breath fans, | |
| Men felt and feared thee of old, whose pastoral clans | |
| Were given to the charge of thy keeping; and soundless panic | |
| Held fast the woodland whose depths and whose heights were Pan’s. | 140 |
| |
| And here, though fear be less than delight, and awe | |
| Be one with desire and with worship of earth and thee, | |
| So mild seems now thy secret and speechless law, | |
| So fair and fearless and faithful and godlike she, | |
| So soft the spell of thy whisper on stream and sea, | 145 |
| Yet man should fear lest he see what of old men saw | |
| And withered: yet shall I quail if thy breath smite me. | |
| |
| Lord God of life and of light and of all things fair, | |
| Lord God of ravin and ruin and all things dim, | |
| Death seals up life, and darkness the sunbright air, | 150 |
| And the stars that watch blind earth in the deep night swim | |
| Laugh, saying, ‘What God is your God, that ye call on him? | |
| What is man, that the God who is guide of our way should care | |
| If day for a man be golden, or night be grim?’ | |
| |
| But thou, dost thou hear? Stars too but abide for a span, | 155 |
| Gods too but endure for a season; but thou, if thou be | |
| God, more than shadows conceived and adored of man, | |
| Kind Gods and fierce, that bound him or made him free, | |
| The skies that scorn us are less in thy sight than we, | |
| Whose souls have strength to conceive and perceive thee, Pan, | 160 |
| With sense more subtle than senses that hear and see. | |
| |
| Yet may it not say, though it seek thee and think to find | |
| One soul of sense in the fire and the frost-bound clod, | |
| What heart is this, what spirit alive or blind, | |
| That moves thee: only we know that the ways we trod | 165 |
| We tread, with hands unguided, with feet unshod, | |
| With eyes unlightened; and yet, if with steadfast mind, | |
| Perchance may we find thee and know thee at last for God. | |
| |
| Yet then should God be dark as the dawn is bright, | |
| And bright as the night is dark on the world—no more. | 170 |
| Light slays not darkness, and darkness absorbs not light; | |
| And the labour of evil and good from the years of yore | |
| Is even as the labour of waves on a sunless shore. | |
| And he who is first and last, who is depth and height, | |
| Keeps silence now, as the sun when the woods wax hoar. | 175 |
| |
| The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world’s life | |
| Imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread, | |
| Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife, | |
| Informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead. | |
| No service of bended knee or of humbled head | 180 |
| May soothe or subdue the God who has change to wife: | |
| And life with death is as morning with evening weds. | |
| |
| And yet, if the light and the life in the light that here | |
| Seem soft and splendid and fervid as sleep may seem | |
| Be more than the shine of a smile or the flash of a tear, | 185 |
| Sleep, change, and death are less than a spell-struck dream, | |
| And fear than the fall of a leaf on a starlit stream. | |
| And yet, if the hope that hath said it absorb not fear, | |
| What helps it man that the stars and the waters gleam? | |
| |
| What helps it man, that the noon be indeed intense, | 190 |
| The night be indeed worth worship? Fear and pain | |
| Were lords and masters yet of the secret sense, | |
| Which now dares deem not that light is as darkness, fain | |
| Though dark dreams be to declare it, crying in vain. | |
| For whence, thou God of the light and the darkness, whence | 195 |
| Dawns now this vision that bids not the sunbeams wane? | |
| |
| What light, what shadow, diviner than dawn or night, | |
| Draws near, makes pause, and again—or I dream—draws near? | |
| More soft than shadow, more strong than the strong sun’s light, | |
| More pure than moonbeams—yea, but the rays run sheer | 200 |
| As fire from the sun through the dusk of the pinewood, clear | |
| And constant; yea, but the shadow itself is bright | |
| That the light clothes round with love that is one with fear. | |
| |
| Above and behind it the noon and the woodland lie, | |
| Terrible, radiant with mystery, superb and subdued, | 205 |
| Triumphant in silence; and hardly the sacred sky | |
| Seems free from the tyrannous weight of the dumb fierce mood | |
| Which rules as with fire and invasion of beams that brood | |
| The breathless rapture of earth till its hour pass by | |
| And leave her spirit released and her peace renewed. | 210 |
| |
| I sleep not: never in sleep has a man beholden | |
| This. From the shadow that trembles and yearns with light | |
| Suppressed and elate and reluctant—obscure and golden | |
| As water kindled with presage of dawn or night— | |
| A form, a face, a wonder to sense and sight, | 215 |
| Grows great as the moon through the month; and her eyes embolden | |
| Fear, till it change to desire, and desire to delight. | |
| |
| I sleep not: sleep would die of a dream so strange; | |
| A dream so sweet would die as a rainbow dies, | |
| As a sunbow laughs and is lost on the waves that range | 220 |
| And reck not of light that flickers or spray that flies. | |
| But the sun withdraws not, the woodland shrinks not or sighs, | |
| No sweet thing sickens with sense or with fear of change; | |
| Light wounds not, darkness blinds not, my steadfast eyes. | |
| |
| Only the soul in my sense that receives the soul | 225 |
| Whence now my spirit is kindled with breathless bliss | |
| Knows well if the light that wounds it with love makes whole, | |
| If hopes that carol be louder than fears that hiss, | |
| If truth be spoken of flowers and of waves that kiss, | |
| Of clouds and stars that contend for a sunbright goal. | 230 |
| And yet may I dream that I dream not indeed of this? | |
| |
| An earth-born dreamer, constrained by the bonds of birth, | |
| Held fast by the flesh, compelled by his veins that beat | |
| And kindle to rapture or wrath, to desire or to mirth, | |
| May hear not surely the fall of immortal feet, | 235 |
| May feel not surely if heaven upon earth be sweet; | |
| And here is my sense fulfilled of the joys of earth, | |
| Light, silence, bloom, shade, murmur of leaves that meet. | |
| |
| Bloom, fervour, and perfume of grasses and flowers aglow, | |
| Breathe and brighten about me: the darkness gleams, | 240 |
| The sweet light shivers and laughs on the slopes below, | |
| Made soft by leaves that lighten and change like dreams; | |
| The silence thrills with the whisper of secret streams | |
| That well from the heart of the woodland: these I know: | |
| Earth bore them, heaven sustained them with showers and beams. | 245 |
| |
| I lean my face to the heather, and drink the sun | |
| Whose flame-lit odour satiates the flowers: mine eyes | |
| Close, and the goal of delight and of life is one: | |
| No more I crave of earth or her kindred skies. | |
| No more? But the joy that springs from them smiles and flies: | 250 |
| The sweet work wrought of them surely, the good work done, | |
| If the mind and the face of the season be loveless, dies. | |
| |
| Thee, therefore, thee would I come to, cleave to, cling, | |
| If haply thy heart be kind and thy gifts be good, | |
| Unknown sweet spirit, whose vesture is soft in spring, | 255 |
| In summer splendid, in autumn pale as the wood | |
| That shudders and wanes and shrinks as a shamed thing should, | |
| In winter bright as the mail of a war-worn king | |
| Who stands where foes fled far from the face of him stood. | |
| |
| My spirit or thine is it, breath of thy life or of mine, | 260 |
| Which fills my sense with a rapture that casts our fear? | |
| Pan’s dim frown wanes, and his wild eyes brighten as thine, | |
| Transformed as night or as day by the kindling year. | |
| Earth-born, or mine eye were withered that sees, mine ear | |
| That hears were stricken to death by the sense divine, | 265 |
| Earth-born I know thee: but heaven is about me here. | |
| |
| The terror that whispers in darkness and flames in light, | |
| The doubt that speaks in the silence of earth and sea, | |
| The sense, more fearful at noon than in midmost night, | |
| Of wrath scarce hushed and of imminent till to be, | 270 |
| Where are they? Heaven is as earth, and as heaven to me | |
| Earth: for the shadows that sundered them here take flight; | |
| And naught is all, as am I, but a dream of thee. | |
