And then I changed my pipings,—
Singing how down the vale of Manalus
I pursued a maiden, and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus;
It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed.
All wept—as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood-
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew out the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor, dry, empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
"This is the way," laughed the great god Pan,
(Laughed while he sat by the river,)
“The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.”
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,—
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
SHE stepped upon Sicilian grass,
Demeter's daughter fresh and fair,
A child of light, a radiant lass,
And gamesome as the morning air.
The daffodils were fair to see,
They nodded lightly on the lea,
Persephone-Persephone!
Lo! one she marked of rarer growth
Than orchis or anemone;
For it the maiden left them both,
And parted from her company.
Drawn nigh, she deemed it fairer still,
And stooped to gather by the rill
The daffodil, the daffodil.
What ailed the meadow that it shook?
What ailed the air of Sicily?
She wondered by the brattling brook,
And trembled with the trembling lea.
The coal-black horses rise-they rise:
O mother, mother!" low she cries-
Persephone-Persephone!
“O light, light, light!" she cries, "farewell;
The coal-black horses wait for me.
O shade of shades, where I must dwell,
Demeter, mother, far from thee!
Ah, fated doom that I fulfil!
Ah, fateful flower beside the rill!
The daffodil, the daffodil!"
What ails her that she comes not home?
Demeter seeks her far and wide,
And gloomy-browed doth ceaseless roam
From many a morn till eventide.
"My life, immortal though it be,
Is nought," she cries, "for want of thee,
Persephone-Persephone!
"Meadows of Enna, let the rain
No longer drop to feed your rills,
Nor dew refresh the fields again,
With all their nodding daffodils!
Fade, fade and droop, O lilied lea,
Where thou, dear heart, wert reft from me-
Persephone-Persephone!"
She reigns upon her dusky throne,
'Mid shades of heroes dread to see;
Among the dead she breathes alone,
Persephone-Persephone!
Or seated on the Elysian hill
She dreams of earthly daylight still,
And murmurs of the daffodil.
A voice in Hades soundeth clear,
The shadows mourn and flit below;
It cries "Thou Lord of Hades, hear,
And let Demeter's daughter go.
The tender corn upon the lea
Droops in her goddess gloom, when she
Cries for her lost Persephone.
"From land to land she raging flies,
The green fruit falleth in her wake,
And harvest fields beneath her eyes
To earth the grain unripened shake.
Arise, and set the maiden free;
Why should the world such sorrow dree
By reason of Persephone?"
He takes the cleft pomegranate seeds: "Love, eat with me this parting day;" Then bids them fetch the coal-black steeds-"Demeter's daughter, wouldst away?” The gates of Hades set her free; "She will return full soon," saith he"My wife, my wife Persephone."
Low laughs the dark king on his throne"I gave her of pomegranate seeds." Demeter's daughter stands alone
Upon the fair Eleusian meads.
Her mother meets her. "Hail!" saith she; "And doth our daylight dazzle thee, My love, my child Persephone?
"What moved thee, daughter, to forsake
Thy fellow-maids that fatal morn,
And give thy dark lord power to take
Thee living to his realm forlorn?"
Her lips reply without her will,
As one addressed who slumbereth still"The daffodil, the daffodil!"
Her eyelids droop with light oppressed,
And sunny wafts that round her stir.
Her cheek upon her mother's breast--
Demeter's kisses comfort her.
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