The woodman answered me,
  His faggot on his back:—­
“Seek not the face of Pan to see;
Flee from his clear note summoning thee
  To darkness deep and black!”

 “He dwells in thickest shade,
  Piping his notes forlorn
Of sorrow never to be allayed;
Turn from his coverts sad
  Of twilight unto morn!”

The woodman passed away
  Along the forest path;
His ax shone keen and grey
In the last beams of day: 
  And all was still as death:—­

Only Pan singing sweet
  Out of Earth’s fragrant shade;
I dreamed his eyes to meet,
And found but shadow laid
  Before my tired feet.

Comes no more dawn to me,
  Nor bird of open skies. 
Only his woods’ deep gloom I see
  Till, at the end of all, shall rise,
Afar and tranquilly,
Death’s stretching sea.

THE CHILDREN OF STARE

  Winter is fallen early
  On the house of Stare;
Birds in reverberating flocks
  Haunt its ancestral box;
  Bright are the plenteous berries
  In clusters in the air.

  Still is the fountain’s music,
  The dark pool icy still,
Whereupon a small and sanguine sun
  Floats in a mirror on,
  Into a West of crimson,
  From a South of daffodil.

  ’Tis strange to see young children
  In such a wintry house;
Like rabbits’ on the frozen snow
  Their tell-tale footprints go;
  Their laughter rings like timbrels
  ’Neath evening ominous: 

  Their small and heightened faces
  Like wine-red winter buds;
Their frolic bodies gentle as
  Flakes in the air that pass,
  Frail as the twirling petal
  From the briar of the woods.

  Above them silence lours,
  Still as an arctic sea;
Light fails; night falls; the wintry moon
  Glitters; the crocus soon
  Will ope grey and distracted
  On earth’s austerity: 

  Thick mystery, wild peril,
  Law like an iron rod:—­
Yet sport they on in Spring’s attire,
  Each with his tiny fire
  Blown to a core of ardour
  By the awful breath of God.

AGE

This ugly old crone—­
Every beauty she had
When a maid, when a maid. 
Her beautiful eyes,
Too youthful, too wise,
Seemed ever to come
To so lightless a home,
Cold and dull as a stone. 
And her cheeks—­who would guess
Cheeks cadaverous as this
Once with colours were gay
As the flower on its spray? 
Who would ever believe
Aught could bring one to grieve
So much as to make
Lips bent for love’s sake
So thin and so grey? 
O Youth, come away! 
As she asks in her lone,
This old, desolate crone. 
She loves us no more;
She is too old to care
For the charms that of yore
Made her body so fair. 
Past repining, past care,
She lives but to bear
One or two fleeting years
Earth’s indifference:  her tears
Have lost now their heat;
Her hands and her feet
Now shake but to be
Shed as leaves from a tree;
And her poor heart beats on
Like a sea—­the storm gone.