THE PHÆACIANS. WHY from the dreamy meadows, More fair than any dream, Why will you seek the shadows Beyond the ocean stream? Through straits of storm and peril, Through firths unsailed before, Why make you for the sterile, The dark Kimmerian shore? There no bright streams are flowing, There day and night are one, No harvest time, no sowing, No sight of any sun; No sound of song or tabor, No dance shall greet you there; No noise of mortal labour, Breaks on the blind chill air. Are ours not happy places, Where Gods with mortals trod? Saw not our sires the faces Of many a present God? THE SEEKERS. Nay, now no God comes hither, In shape that men may see; They fare we know not whither, We know not what they be. Yea, though the sunset lingers Far in your fairy glades, Though yours the sweetest singers, Though yours the kindest maids, Yet here be the true shadows, Here in the doubtful light; Amid the dreamy meadows No shadow haunts the night. We seek a city splendid, With light beyond the sun; Or lands where dreams are ended, And works and days are done. A BALLAD OF DEPARTURE. {110} FAIR white bird, what song art thou singing In wintry weather of lands o’er sea? Dear white bird, what way art thou winging, Where no grass grows, and no green tree? I looked at the far off fields and grey, There grew no tree but the cypress tree, That bears sad fruits with the flowers of May, And whoso looks on it, woe is he. And whoso eats of the fruit thereof Has no more sorrow, and no more love; And who sets the same in his garden stead, In a little space he is waste and dead. THEY HEAR THE SIRENS FOR THE SECOND TIME. THE weary sails a moment slept, The oars were silent for a space, As past Hesperian shores we swept, That were as a remembered face Seen after lapse of hopeless years, In Hades, when the shadows meet, Dim through the mist of many tears, And strange, and though a shadow, sweet. So seemed the half-remembered shore, That slumbered, mirrored in the blue, With havens where we touched of yore, And ports that over well we knew. Then broke the calm before a breeze That sought the secret of the west; And listless all we swept the seas Towards the Islands of the Blest. Beside a golden sanded bay We saw the Sirens, very fair The flowery hill whereon they lay, The flowers set upon their hair. Their old sweet song came down the wind, Remembered music waxing strong, Ah now no need of cords to bind, No need had we of Orphic song.