Hark! a sound. Is it I sleep? Of the Faun's Wake I? or do my senses keep Awakening. Commune yet with thoughtful night And dream they feel, not see, the light
That, with a chord as if a lyre Were upward swept by tongues of fire, Spreads in all-seeing majesty Over crag, dale, curved shore, and sea?
If this be sleep, I do not sleep. I hear the little woodnote weep Of a shy, darkling bird which cries In a sweet-fluted, sharp surprise
At glimpse of me, the faun-beast, sleeping Nigh under her. My crook'd leg, sweeping Some dream away, perhaps, awoke her, For dew shook from a bough doth soak her.
And all elsewhere how still it is!— The mist beyond the precipice Smokes gently up. The bushes hang Over the gulph‘ cross which I sprang
Last midnight,— though the unicorn, Who with clanged hooves and lowered horn Raging pursued, now hidden lies Amid the cragside dewberries
And sweats his frosty flanks in sleep, Dreaming he views again my leap Thrice hazardous. The silver chasm
Sighs, and many a blithe phantasm Turns in the sunlight's quivering ray. I couch in peace. Thoughts fond and gay Feed on my sense of maiden hours
And earth refreshed by suns and showers Of nightly dew and heavy quiet.— Though last night rang with dinning riot: Dionysos in headlong mood
Ranged through the labyrinthine wood; Fleet maids sped, yelping, on with him, Brandishing a torn heifer's limb, Dissonant cymbals, or black bowl
Of wine and blood; a wolfish howl Fled ululant with them.... Now there is Depth, the white mist, the great sun, peace.
Too numb such sunshine!— Let me hence Of the Faun's Out of the solemn imminence Descent from Of yon chill spire whose shadow creeps the Mountain. Toward me from the stagnant deeps
Of the ravine. For now I will Descend and take again my fill Of fancy wild and musing joy, Such as each dawn brings to alloy
The long affliction of a spirit Who a complete world did inherit, And feels it crumbling. I will down
Whither twin bluffs of sheer stone frown Over sunk seas of billowing pine Terrace on terrace, line on line, Below whose heads the broad downs slope
Away, away till senses grope At something rather felt than seen: The sea,— not wave-tops, but a sheen Under the dazed and distant sky....
Curled on a cliff-top let me lie. ( For yonder, hap, a breeze is blowing, And the sun's first gleam is showing Under far wreckage: since our height
Inherits day while yet their light Quakes gold under the low clouds’ rift. ) Down, then! Miraculously swift These limbs the gods have given me!...
Couched mid the gorse, anon I see, Opposing this my bluff, the face Of the sheer rock, and‘ long it trace A sill scarce ample for a goat,
Yet midway in the ledge-path note A cave's mouth, which thick creepers hide Fallen in a silvery tide From a slant crevice overhead.
And, lo! the creeper stirs, is shed — And all falls quiet. Till at last Issues a voice deep, young and vast:
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