XXI
Yet shall she not our mistress live,
As doth the moon of ocean,
Though gently as the moon she give
Our thoughts a light and motion:
More like a harp of many lays,
Moving its master while he plays.
XXII
No sod in all that island doth
Yawn open for the dead;
No wind hath borne a traitor's oath;
No earth, a mourner's tread;
We cannot say by stream or shade,
"I suffered here, – was here betrayed."
XXIII
Our only "farewell" we shall laugh
To shifting cloud or hour,
And use our only epitaph
To some bud turned a flower:
Our only tears shall serve to prove
Excess in pleasure or in love.
XXIV
Our fancies shall their plumage catch
From fairest island-birds,
Whose eggs let young ones out at hatch,
Born singing! then our words
Unconsciously shall take the dyes
Of those prodigious fantasies.
XXV
Yea, soon, no consonant unsmooth
Our smile-tuned lips shall reach;
Sounds sweet as Hellas spake in youth
Shall glide into our speech:
(What music, certes, can you find
As soft as voices which are kind?)
XXVI
And often, by the joy without
And in us, overcome,
We, through our musing, shall let float
Such poems, – sitting dumb, —
As Pindar might have writ if he
Had tended sheep in Arcady;
XXVII
Or Æschylus – the pleasant fields
He died in, longer knowing;
Or Homer, had men's sins and shields
Been lost in Meles flowing;
Or Poet Plato, had the undim
Unsetting Godlight broke on him.
XXVIII
Choose me the cave most worthy choice,
To make a place for prayer,
And I will choose a praying voice
To pour our spirits there:
How silverly the echoes run!
Thy will be done, – thy will be done.
XXIX
Gently yet strangely uttered words!
They lift me from my dream;
The island fadeth with its swards
That did no more than seem:
The streams are dry, no sun could find —
The fruits are fallen, without wind.
XXX
So oft the doing of God's will
Our foolish wills undoeth!
And yet what idle dream breaks ill,
Which morning-light subdueth?
And who would murmur and misdoubt,
When God's great sunrise finds him out?
THE SOUL'S TRAVELLING
Ἤδη νοεροὺς
Πέτασαι ταρσούσ.
Synesius.
I