Melampus

     I

     With love exceeding a simple love of the things
     That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;
     Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings
     From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck;
     Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball;
     Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook;
     The good physician Melampus, loving them all,
     Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.

     II

     For him the woods were a home and gave him the key
     Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers. 
     The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we
     To earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours: 
     And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined
     Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows
     In them, in us, from the source by man unattained
     Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose.

     III

     And this he deemed might be boon of love to a breast
     Embracing tenderly each little motive shape,
     The prone, the flitting, who seek their food whither best
     Their wits direct, whither best from their foes escape. 
     For closer drawn to our mother’s natural milk,
     As babes they learn where her motherly help is great: 
     They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk,
     And need they medical antidotes, find them straight.

     IV

     Of earth and sun they are wise, they nourish their broods,
     Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and pain
     Like swimmers varying billows:  never in woods
     Runs white insanity fleeing itself:  all sane
     The woods revolve:  as the tree its shadowing limns
     To some resemblance in motion, the rooted life
     Restrains disorder:  you hear the primitive hymns
     Of earth in woods issue wild of the web of strife.

     V

     Now sleeping once on a day of marvellous fire,
     A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave regret
     That death his people had dealt their dam and their sire,
     Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and set
     Their tongues to lick him:  the swift affectionate tongue
     Of each ran licking the slumberer:  then his ears
     A forked red tongue tickled shrewdly:  sudden upsprung,
     He heard a voice piping:  Ay, for he has no fears!

     VI

     A bird said that, in the notes of birds, and the speech
     Of men, it seemed:  and another renewed:  He moves
     To learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach;
     He feeds his young as do we, and as we love loves. 
     No fears have I of a man who goes with his head
     To earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of hand: 
     I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed;
     I pipe him much for his good could he understand.