VII

     Melampus touched at his ears, laid finger on wrist
     He was not dreaming, he sensibly felt and heard. 
     Above, through leaves, where the tree-twigs inter-twist,
     He spied the birds and the bill of the speaking bird. 
     His cushion mosses in shades of various green,
     The lumped, the antlered, he pressed, while the sunny snake
     Slipped under:  draughts he had drunk of clear Hippocrene,
     It seemed, and sat with a gift of the Gods awake.

     VIII

     Divinely thrilled was the man, exultingly full,
     As quick well-waters that come of the heart of earth,
     Ere yet they dart in a brook are one bubble-pool
     To light and sound, wedding both at the leap of birth. 
     The soul of light vivid shone, a stream within stream;
     The soul of sound from a musical shell outflew;
     Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam,
     The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he knew.

     IX

     He knew the Hours:  they were round him, laden with seed
     Of hours bestrewn upon vapour, and one by one
     They winged as ripened in fruit the burden decreed
     For each to scatter; they flushed like the buds in sun,
     Bequeathing seed to successive similar rings,
     Their sisters, bearers to men of what men have earned: 
     He knew them, talked with the yet unreddened; the stings,
     The sweets, they warmed at their bosoms divined, discerned.

     X

     Not unsolicited, sought by diligent feet,
     By riddling fingers expanded, oft watched in growth
     With brooding deep as the noon-ray’s quickening wheat,
     Ere touch’d, the pendulous flower of the plants of sloth,
     The plants of rigidness, answered question and squeeze,
     Revealing wherefore it bloomed, uninviting, bent,
     Yet making harmony breathe of life and disease,
     The deeper chord of a wonderful instrument.

     XI

     So passed he luminous-eyed for earth and the fates
     We arm to bruise or caress us:  his ears were charged
     With tones of love in a whirl of voluble hates,
     With music wrought of distraction his heart enlarged. 
     Celestial-shining, though mortal, singer, though mute,
     He drew the Master of harmonies, voiced or stilled,
     To seek him; heard at the silent medicine-root
     A song, beheld in fulfilment the unfulfilled.

     XII

     Him Phoebus, lending to darkness colour and form
     Of light’s excess, many lessons and counsels gave,
     Showed Wisdom lord of the human intricate swarm,
     And whence prophetic it looks on the hives that rave,
     And how acquired, of the zeal of love to acquire,
     And where it stands, in the centre of life a sphere;
     And Measure, mood of the lyre, the rapturous lyre,
     He said was Wisdom, and struck him the notes to hear.