It seemed a single harper swept Our wild wood’s inner chords and waked A spirit that for yearning ached Ere men desired and joyed or wept. Or now a legion ravishing Musician rivals did unite In love of sweetness high to sing The subtle song that rivals light; From breast of earth to breast of sky: And they were secret, they were nigh: A hand the magic might disperse; The magic swung my universe. Yet sharpened breath forbade to dream, Where all was visionary gleam; Where Seasons, as with cymbals, clashed; And feelings, passing joy and woe, Churned, gurgled, spouted, interflashed, Nor either was the one we know: Nor pregnant of the heart contained In us were they, that griefless plained, That plaining soared; and through the heart Struck to one note the wide apart:— A passion surgent from despair; A paining bliss in fervid cold; Off the last vital edge of air, Leap heavenward of the lofty-souled, For rapture of a wine of tears; As had a star among the spheres Caught up our earth to some mid-height Of double life to ear and sight, She giving voice to thought that shines Keen-brilliant of her deepest mines; While steely drips the rillet clinked, And hoar with crust the cowslip swelled. Then was the lyre of earth beheld, Then heard by me: it holds me linked; Across the years to dead-ebb shores I stand on, my blood-thrill restores. But would I conjure into me Those issue notes, I must review What serious breath the woodland drew; The low throb of expectancy; How the white mother-muteness pressed On leaf and meadow-herb; how shook, Nigh speech of mouth, the sparkle-crest Seen spinning on the bracken-crook. THE TEACHING OF THE NUDE I A SATYR spied a Goddess in her bath, Unseen of her attendant nymphs; none knew. Forthwith the creature to his fellows drew, And looking backward on the curtained path, He strove to tell; he could but heave a breast Too full, and point to mouth, with failing leers: Vainly he danced for speech, he giggled tears, Made as if torn in two, as if tight pressed, As if cast prone; then fetching whimpered tunes For words, flung heel and set his hairy flight Through forest-hollows, over rocky height. The green leaves buried him three rounds of moons. A senatorial Satyr named what herb Had hurried him outrunning reason’s curb. II