Ii

Centaur. Up! the ag'd centaurs lie yet sleeping, While crouch I palled of this cavern lair THE CENTAUR'S And watch the stretched sea-eagle sweeping MORNING SONG. Down the grey-blue drizzling air. The sea-nymphs, too, will now be waking, If sickle-eyed they have not played Across the moonlight sets me aching, Longing and slinking, half afraid, Down the feathery, tawny sand On sighing tread Deep into banks of glistering shell, To halt in dread Lest my hoof-scrunch break the spell Of the syren-chants that swell From the dim shoals toward the land.

But this morn the breeze is blowing Freshly: I hear lightly flowing From the bending giant beam Bars the forehead of our door The golden raindrops in a stream Pattering on the steamy floor.

Faun. It is the Centaur's voice I hear! Young and lusty, deep and clear: And the Panisks at his voice In their fastnesses rejoice, Emerging from the creviced crag Or cave beneath the mountain's jag, Merry, shaggy, light of hoof, To run along the narrow roof, And upon the shelved height Dance before the swimming light.

Centaur. And I see upon the ledge, Astir over the hanging edge, THE CENTAUR'S A russet briar cold with dew MORNING SONG And beyond, forlornly pent (continued) In a grey cloud's gliding rent, A pure pool of the brightest blue: So near it seems I've but to cast A flint out on the forward vast To mark it flashing blithely through!

And now at last! At last The great Sun, The Sudden One, Stamps upon the cloudy floor; The heavens are split, and through the floor Heaven's golden treasures tumbling pour.... And the Sun himself, divine, Doth descend In such a bursting blaze of shine That his glorious hair is shook Over the wide world's craggiest end! And, even I, I dare not look.

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I will shout! I will ramp! Just three bounds: then out and stamp Where the air like water is Eddying up over the precipice;-- Wind with an edge to it, sea-damp, Blowing from the canyon's race Where the dripping sea-wind heaves Through a tunnel of the rocks Sea-water up in thunderous sheaves Against the precipitous water-rapids, To whip from off th' high-hurtled shocks Bursts of mist which soak the leaves Of each scented bush that cleaves To the cliffs. Till Fauns and Lapiths Dance in the sun-bewildered brakes, Till even flushed Silenus wakes, And--with a short deep-throated troll To the wind and to the wine, Both delirious, both divine!-- Starts, as he drains the tilted bowl, At din, to rolling uproar grown, Of rocks dislodged and bounding down, With splinter of pines and flint-shocked flashes, From the ridge whereon we dance In a loud exuberance Of rattling hoofs whose echoes drown The squealing joy or reedy pining Of Pan's pipe, where Pan reclining Plays in the clouded mountain's crown!