Your laugh in marble with our human laugh?" Under the thickly tangled branches, thus Did I speak to him; he no answer gave-- Not even a murmur. On the pedestal Leaning, I listened; but the past stirred not. Dumb to my words and to my pity deaf, The Satyr, motionless, was vaguely blanched By the wan glimmer of the dying day. To see him there, sinister, half drawn out From his dark framing, and by damp discoloured, Brought to one's mind the handle of a sword In torso chiselled--an old rusty sword, Left for long years neglected in its sheath. I shook my head, and moved myself away. Then, from the copses, from the dried up boughs Pendent above him, from secret caves Hid in the wood, methought a ghostly voice Came forth and woke an echo in my soul, As in the hollow of an amphora. "Imprudent poet," thus it seemed to say, "What dost thou here? Leave the forsaken Fauns In peace beneath their trees! Dost thou not know, Poet, that ever it is impious deemed, In desert spots where drowsy shades repose-- Though love itself might prompt thee--to shake down The moss that hangs from ruined centuries, And, with the vain noise of thine ill-timed words, To mar the recollections of the dead?" Then to the gardens all enwrapped in mist I hurried, dreaming of the vanished days. And still the tree-tops were with mystery rife; And still, behind me--hieroglyph obscure Of antique alphabet--the lonely Faun Held to his laughter, through the falling night. I went my way; but yet--in saddened spirit Pondering on all that had my vision crossed, Floating in air or scattered under foot, Confused and blent, beauty and spring and morn, Leaves of old summers, fair ones of old time-- Through all, at distance would my fancy see, In the woods, statues; shadows in the past! CHARADES. I. Look from the prow of thine anchored bark-- Anchored by classic shore--and mark, Down fathoms-deep in the purple sea, How Time and the waters have dealt on me Art lost in the moonless and starless night? Far-away looming, a light! a light! Fearlessly steer, for on me 'tis placed, To guide thy bark o'er the trackless waste Earth knows me, too; and will heave and quake Where my subterranean course I take: And none so aghast at my ravages then, As they whose type was the Sire of men. But not ever thus; at times I'm seen On the cheek or the neck of Beauty's queen; Or (to favoured mortal alone confest) Tinging the snow upon Beauty's breast. So, whether above the waves, or below, Or beneath the Earth, or on breast of snow, Linked with the past, or alive to-day, Tell who I am--if tell ye may. II. My lady calls; my First obeys-- Nor less his lord's behest: In bower and hall, in olden days, My First was in request. Yet 'tis my First that tells us now What then my First was doing; How he went forth to war, and how He prospered in his wooing.