ECHOES, UNSEEN: Echoes we: listen! We cannot stay: As dew-stars glisten Then fade away-- Child of Ocean! _170 ASIA: Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses Of their aereal tongues yet sound. PANTHEA: I hear. ECHOES: Oh, follow, follow, As our voice recedeth Through the caverns hollow, _175 Where the forest spreadeth; [MORE DISTANT.] Oh, follow, follow! Through the caverns hollow, As the song floats thou pursue, Where the wild bee never flew, _180 Through the noontide darkness deep, By the odour-breathing sleep Of faint night-flowers, and the waves At the fountain-lighted caves, While our music, wild and sweet, _185 Mocks thy gently falling feet, Child of Ocean! ASIA: Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint And distant. PANTHEA: List! the strain floats nearer now. ECHOES: In the world unknown _190 Sleeps a voice unspoken; By thy step alone Can its rest be broken; Child of Ocean! ASIA: How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind! _195 ECHOES: Oh, follow, follow! Through the caverns hollow, As the song floats thou pursue, By the woodland noontide dew; By the forests, lakes, and fountains, _200 Through the many-folded mountains; To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms, Where the Earth reposed from spasms, On the day when He and thou Parted, to commingle now; _205 Child of Ocean! ASIA: Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine, And follow, ere the voices fade away. SCENE 2.2: A FOREST, INTERMINGLED WITH ROCKS AND CAVERNS. ASIA AND PANTHEA PASS INTO IT. TWO YOUNG FAUNS ARE SITTING ON A ROCK LISTENING. SEMICHORUS 1 OF SPIRITS: The path through which that lovely twain Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew, And each dark tree that ever grew, Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue; Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain, _5 Can pierce its interwoven bowers, Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew, Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze, Between the trunks of the hoar trees, Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers _10 Of the green laurel, blown anew, And bends, and then fades silently, One frail and fair anemone: Or when some star of many a one That climbs and wanders through steep night, _15 Has found the cleft through which alone Beams fall from high those depths upon Ere it is borne away, away, By the swift Heavens that cannot stay, It scatters drops of golden light, _20 Like lines of rain that ne'er unite: And the gloom divine is all around, And underneath is the mossy ground.