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I BREATHERS of wisdom won without a quest, | |
| Quaint uncouth dreamers, voices high and strange; | |
| Flutists of lands where beauty hath no change, | |
| And wintry grief is a forgotten guest; | |
| Sweet murmurers of everlasting rest, | 5 |
| For whom glad days have ever yet to run, | |
| And moments are as aeons, and the sun | |
| But ever sunken half-way toward the west. | |
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| Often to me who heard you in your day, | |
| With close wrapt ears, it could not choose but seem | 10 |
| That earth, our mother, searching in what way | |
| Men’s hearts might know her spirit’s inmost dream, | |
| Ever at rest beneath life’s change and stir, | |
| Made you her soul, and bade you pipe for her. | |
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II In those mute days when spring was in her glee, | 15 |
| And hope was strong, we knew not why or how, | |
| And earth, the mother, dreamed with brooding brow, | |
| Musing on life, and what the hours might be, | |
| When love should ripen to maternity, | |
| Then like high flutes in silvery interchange | 20 |
| Ye piped with voices still and sweet and strange, | |
| And ever as ye piped, on every tree | |
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| The great buds swelled; among the pensive woods | |
| The spirits of first flowers awoke and flung | |
| From buried faces the close-fitting hoods, | 25 |
| And listened to your piping till they fell, | |
| The frail spring-beauty with her perfumed bell, | |
| The wind-flower, and the spotted adder-tongue. | |
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III All the day long, wherever pools might be | |
| Among the golden meadows, where the air | 30 |
| Stood in a dream, as it were moored there | |
| For ever in a noontide reverie, | |
| Or where the birds made riot of their glee | |
| In the still woods, and the hot sun shone down, | |
| Crossed with warm lucent shadows on the brown | 35 |
| Leaf-paven pools, that bubbled dreamily. | |
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| Or far away in whispering river meads | |
| And watery marshes where the brooding noon, | |
| Full with the wonder of its own sweet boon, | |
| Nestled and slept among the noiseless reeds, | 40 |
| Yet sat and murmured, motionless as they, | |
| With eyes that dreamed beyond the night and day. | |
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IV And when day passed and over Heaven’s height, | |
| Thin with the many stars and cool with dew, | |
| The fingers of the hours slowly drew | 45 |
| The wonder of the ever healing night, | |
| No grief or loneliness or rapt delight | |
| Or weight of silence ever brought to you | |
| Slumber or rest; only your voices grew | |
| More high and solemn; slowly with hushed flight | 50 |
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| Ye saw the echoing hours go by, long-drawn, | |
| Nor ever stirred, watching with fathomless eyes, | |
| And with your countless clear antiphonies | |
| Filling the earth and heaven, even till dawn, | |
| Last-risen, found you with its first pale gleam, | 55 |
| Still with soft throats unaltered in your dream. | |
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V And slowly as we heard you, day by day, | |
| The stillness of enchanted reveries | |
| Bound brain and spirit and half-closèd eyes, | |
| In some divine sweet wonder-dream astray; | 60 |
| To us no sorrow or upreared dismay | |
| Nor any discord came, but evermore | |
| The voices of mankind, the outer roar, | |
| Grew strange and murmurous, faint and far away. | |
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| Morning and noon and midnight exquisitely, | 65 |
| Rapt with your voices, this alone we knew, | |
| Cities might change and fall, and men might die, | |
| Secure were we, content to dream with you | |
| That change and pain are shadows faint and fleet, | |
| And dreams are real, and life is only sweet. | 70 |
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