Chapter I: Front Matter

PAN-WORSHIP
AND OTHER POEMS

PAN-WORSHIP
AND OTHER POEMS

BY
ELEANOR FARJEON

LONDON
ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET, W.
1908

TO MY FATHER

CONTENTS

PAGE.

Pan-Worship 9

Vagrant Songs 13

King Laurin's Garden 18

The Mysterious Forest 21

The Old Grey Queen 22

The Quest 24

The Unspoken Word 26

In the Oculist's Anteroom 33

Little Dream-Brother 34

Faust and Margaret 36

Dream-Ships 37

The Moral 38

Colour-Tones 40

From an old Garden 42

A Sheaf of Nature-Songs 59

Apollo in Pherae 72

PAN-WORSHIP

In Arcady there lies a crystal spring
Ring'd all about with green melodious reeds
Swaying seal'd music up and down the wind.
Here on its time-defacèd pedestal
The image of a half-forgotten God
Crumbles to its complete oblivion.
The faithful and invariable earth
Tilts at the shrine her sacrificial cup,
Spilling libations from the brim that runs
The golden nectar of her daffodils
And rivulets of summer-breathing flow'rs.
O evanescent temples built of man
To deities he honoured and dethroned!
Earth shoots a trail of her eternal vine
To crown the head that men have ceased to honour.
Beneath the coronal of leaf and lichen
The mocking smile upon the lips derides
Pan's lost dominion; but the pointed ears
Are keen and prick'd with old remember'd sounds.
All my breast aches with longing for the past!
Thou God of stone, I have a craving in me
For knowledge of thee as thou wert in old
Enchanted twilights in Arcadia.
Arcadia! it is the very music
Of the first spring-tide rippling its first wave
Over the naked, laughing baby world ...
Come again, thou sparkling spring-tide, come again,
Rush in and flood this autumn from my soul!
These waters welling at a dead God's shrine,
These happy waters bubbling limpid kisses,
Even with such bright and eager lips made wet
The hem of the earth's garment in the days
When earth was youthful and the Gods of Greece
In starry constellation crowned Olympus.
What drifting mists have veil'd the Olympian fires?
What of the Gods of Greece? and what of Greece?
O virgin Greece, standing with naked feet
In the morning dews of the world against the light
Of an infant dawn! old Greece, ever-young Greece,
The pagan in my blood, the instinct in me
That yearns back, back to nature-worship, cries
Aloud to thee! I would stoop to kiss those feet,
Sweet white wet feet washed with the earth's first dews:—
And leaning ear to grass I would re-catch
Echoes of footsteps sounding down dim ages
For ever the music once they made on thee:
The flaming step of the young Apollo when,
With limbs like light and golden locks toss'd back
On a smooth ivory shoulder, he avenged
His mother's wrongs on Python: the dreaming step
Of Hylas in the woods of Mysia
Leading to sleep beneath sweet sylvan waters:
The laughing step of untrammell'd Atalanta
Spurning the ground before her golden capture:
Child-Proserpina stepping like a flower,
And the singing step of Syrinx fleeing—what?
If thou couldst speak, neglected, sneering stone,
Thou wouldst know how to answer me. Wilt thou
Not speak?... How still it is!... The noise of the world
Is shut about with silence!... If I kneel,
Bend and adore, make sacrifice to thee,
If to thy long-deserted fane I bring
Tribute of milk and honey—then if I snap
That loveliest pipe of all at the spring's margin
And let the song of Syrinx from its hollow,
Nay, even the nymph's sweet self—O Pan, old Pan,
Shall I not see thee stirring in the stone,
Crack thy confinement, leap forth—_be_ again?
I can believe it, master of bright streams,
Lord of green woodlands, king of sun-spread plains
And star-splashed hills and valleys drenched in moonlight!
And I shall see again a dance of Dryads
And airy shapes of Oreads circling free
To shy sweet pipings of fantastic fauns
And lustier-breathing satyrs ... God of Nature,
Thrice hailing thee by name with boisterous lungs
I will thrill thee back from the dead ages, thus:
_Pan! Pan! O Pan! bring back thy reign again
Upon the earth!_...
Numb pointed ears, ye hear
Only the wash and whisper of far waters,
The pale green waters of thin distant Springs
Under the pale green light of distant moons
Washing upon the shores of the old, old world
With a foam of flowers, a foam of whispering flowers....

VAGRANT SONGS

I

But yesterday the winds of March
Bent back the barren branches of the larch ...
But O! to-day
The bareness from the earth is swept away.

Deep through my swelling breast I hear
The wild call of the gipsy time o' year—
O, Vagrant Spring,
Brother o' mine, I'm for the gipsying!

The greening earth I stand upon
Tingles my feet: Brother, we must begone!
Younger and younger,
All my heart cries aloud with Wander-Hunger

II

Of troubles know I none,
Of pleasures know I many—
I rove beneath the sun
Without a single penny.

A king might envy long
The fare my board adorning—
Upon a throstle's song
I broke my fast this morning;

My lunch, a girl's quick smile,
As I'm a living sinner;
She walked with me a mile ...
I kissed her for my dinner.

Of troubles know I none,
Of pleasures know I many—
I fare beneath the sun
Without a single penny!

III

O, how she laughs with me,
Eats with me, quaffs with me,
Smiles to me, sighs to me,
Questions, replies to me,
Answers my every mood,
Finds good what I find good,
Earth, the green Mother!
Where shall man live and die
Having my treasury
Which never gold could buy—
Water and air and sky
And Earth's great sympathy—
Save he do live as I?
Join with me, Brother!

If you be sickening
Here's for your quickening!
Here at the heart of it
You shall be part of it,
And the good smell of rain
Shall make you whole again—
Join with me, Brother!
Here the life-sap runs green,
Here the life-ways are clean,
Here just one bird that sings
Re-starts your sluggish springs,
Here under moon and sun
You, I and She are one,
Earth, the green Mother!

IV

I lay me on the ground
Under the dark,
And Heaven's purple arc
Drew its deep curtains round
My weary head and shut away the sound.
The golden star-lights crept
Over the hill ...
I lay so very still
I heard them as they stepped ...
"Sleep!" breathed the Earth. Upon her breast I slept.

V

I'll stay one night beneath your roof,
And longer I will stay for no man,
And as for love, I'm loving-proof—
Turn by your eyes, White Woman.

The Wander-fever's in my blood,
I have no time for simple loving—
The hot Earth is in roving mood,
And I too must be roving.

_If_ I should love you ... soon, ah, soon
I'd break your heart to go a-roaming,
And chasing shadows of the moon
Think never once of homing.

Why will you wring my breast with tears?
Tears will not quench the Wander-fever.
Why will you fill my soul with fears
When I will go for ever?

I whom the Earth's green passions move
Have put away all passions human ...
I will not love!... I _dare_ not love ...
Turn by your eyes, White Woman.