XIII

     Sweet, sweet:  ’twas glory of vision, honey, the breeze
     In heat, the run of the river on root and stone,
     All senses joined, as the sister Pierides
     Are one, uplifting their chorus, the Nine, his own. 
     In stately order, evolved of sound into sight,
     From sight to sound intershifting, the man descried
     The growths of earth, his adored, like day out of night,
     Ascend in song, seeing nature and song allied.

     XIV

     And there vitality, there, there solely in song,
     Resides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs,
     Their forceful cravings, the theme are:  there is it strong,
     The Master said:  and the studious eye that reads,
     (Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount),
     In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound. 
     Pursue thy craft:  it is music drawn of a fount
     To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground.

     XV

     Melampus dwelt among men:  physician and sage,
     He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed,
     Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage
     Outran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed. 
     He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on strings
     Melodious:  as the God did he drive and check,
     Through love exceeding a simple love of the things
     That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.

     Love in the valley

     Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward,
     Couched with her arms behind her golden head,
     Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,
     Lies my young love sleeping in the shade. 
     Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,
     Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow,
     Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me: 
     Then would she hold me and never let me go?

* * *

     Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,
     Swift as the swallow along the river’s light
     Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,
     Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight. 
     Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,
     Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun,
     She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,
     Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won!

* * *

     When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,
     Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,
     Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,
     More love should I have, and much less care. 
     When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,
     Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,
     Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,
     I should miss but one for the many boys and girls.