Ah, the wonder as once he wakened, out of a dream of remembered blisses, Couched in the meadows of dreaming blossom to feel, like the touch of a flower on his eyes, Cool and fresh with the fragment dews of dawn the touch of her light swift kisses, Shed from the shadowy rose of her face between his face and the warm blue skies.
Lost in his new desire He dreamed away the hours; His lyre Lay buried in the flowers:
To whom the King of Heaven, Apollo, lord of light, Had given Beauty and love and might:
Might, if he would, to slay All evil dreams and pierce The grey Veil of the Universe;
With Love that holds in one Sacred and ancient bond The sun And all the vast beyond,
And Beauty to enthrall The soul of man to heaven: Yea, all These gifts to him were given.
_Yet in his dream's desire He drowsed away the hours: His lyre Lay buried in the flowers._
Then in his wrath arose Apollo, lord of light, That shows The wrong deed from the right;
And by what radiant laws O'erruling human needs, The cause To consequence proceeds;
How balanced is the sway He gives each mortal doom: How day Demands the atoning gloom:
How all good things await The soul that pays the price To Fate By equal sacrifice;
And how on him that sleeps For less than labour's sake There creeps Uncharmed, the Pythian snake.
Lulled by the wash of the feathery grasses, a sea with many a sun-swept billow, Heart to heart in the heart of the summer, lover by lover asleep they lay, Hearing only the whirring cicala that chirruped awhile at their poppied pillow Faint and sweet as the murmur of men that laboured in villages far away.
Was not the menace indeed more silent? Ah, what care for labour and sorrow? Gods in the meadows of moly and amaranth surely might envy their deep sweet bed Here where the butterflies troubled the lilies of peace, and took no thought for the morrow, And golden-girdled bees made feast as over the lotus the soft sun spread.
Nearer, nearer the menace glided, out of the gorgeous gloom around them, Out of the poppy-haunted shadows deep in the heart of the purple brake; Till through the hush and the heat as they lay, and their own sweet listless dreams enwound them,-- Mailed and mottled with hues of the grape-bloom suddenly, quietly, glided the snake.