Poor helpless marble, how I've pitied it Less often man--the harder of the two. So then, without a word that might offend His ear difformed--for well the marble hears The voice of thought--I said to him: "You hail From the gay amorous age; O Faun, what saw you, When you were happy? Were you of the Court? Did you take part in fêtes?--For your diversion These Nymphs were fashioned. In this wood, for you, Capable hands mingled the gods of Greece With Roman Cæsars; made rare vases peer Into clear waters; and this garden vext With tortuous labyrinths. When you were happy, O Faun, what saw you? All the secrets tell Of that too vain yet captivating past, Thick set with prudent love-makers, a past In which great poets jostled mighty Kings. How fresh your memory--you are laughing still! Speak to me, comely Faun, as you would speak To tree, or zephyr, or untrodden grass. From end to end of this well-shaded alley, When near you, with the handsome Lautrec, passed The soft-eyed Marguerite, the Bearnaise Queen, Have you, O Greek, O mocker of old days, Have you not sometimes with that oblique eye Winked at the Farnese Hercules?--Alone, In cave as it were of foliage green and moist, Have you, O Faun, considerately turned From side to side when counsel-seekers came, And now advised as shepherd; now as satyr? Have you sometimes upon this very bench Seen at mid-day, Vincent de Paul instilling Grace into Gondi?--Have you ever thrown That searching glance on Louis with Fontange, On Anne with Buckingham; and did they not Start, with flushed cheeks, to hear your laugh ring forth From corner of the wood?--Was your advice As to the thyrsis or the ivy asked, When, the grand ballet of fantastic form, God Phoebus, or god Pan, and all his court Turned the fair head of the fair Montespan, Calling her Amaryllis?--La Fontaine, Flying the courtiers' ears of stone, came he, Tears in his eyelids, to reveal to you The sorrows of his Nymphs of Vaux?--What said Boileau to you, to you, O lettered Faun, Who once with Virgil, in the Eclogue, held That charming dialogue, and deftly made-- Couched on the turf--the heavy spondee dance To the light dactyl's step?--Say, have you seen Young beauties sporting on the sward: Chevreuse Of the swimming eyes, Thiange of airs superb? Have they sometimes, in rosy-tinted group, Girt you so fondly round, that all at once A straggling sunbeam on a fluttering bosom Marked your lascivious profile?--Has your tree Received beneath the quiet of its shade Pale Mazarin's scarlet winding sheet?--Have you Been honoured with a sight of Molière In dreamy mood? Has he perchance at times, Dropping at random a melodious verse, In tone familiar--as is the wont 'Twixt demi-gods--addressed you?--When at eve Homeward hereby the thinker went, has he Who--seeing souls all naked--could not fear Your nudity, in his enquiring mind Confronted you with Man? And did he deem You, spectral cynic, the less sad, less cold, Less wicked, less ironical--comparing