THE
FROGS
I
Breathers
of wisdom won without a quest,
Quaint uncouth dreamers, voices
high and strange,
Flutists of land where beauty
hath no change,
And wintery grief is a forgotten guest,
Sweet murmurers of everlasting rest,
5
For whom glad days have ever
yet to run,
And moments are as æons, and
the sun
But ever sunken half-way toward the west.
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 that 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.
II
In those
mute days when spring was in her glee,
15
And hope was strong, we know
not why or how,
And earthy, the mother, dreamed
with brooding brow.
Musing on life, and what the hours might be,
When loves 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
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 pining
till they fell,
The frail spring-beauty with
her perfumed bell,
The wind-flower, and the spotted adder-tongue.
III
All the day
long, wherever pools might be
Among the golden meadows, where
the air
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Stood in a dream, as it were
moored there
Forever in a noon-tide reverie,
Or where the bird made riot of their glee
In the still woods, and the
hot sun shone down,
Crossed with warm lucent shadows
on the brown
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Leaf-paven pools, that bubbled dreamily,
Or far away
in whispering river meads
And watery marshes where the
brooding noon,
Full with the wonder of its
own secret boon,
Nestled and slept among the noiseless reeds,
40
Ye sat and murmured, motionless
as they,
With eyes that dreamed beyond
the night and day.
IV
And when
day passed and over heaven’s height,
Thin with the many stars and
cool with dew,
The fingers of the deep hours
slowly drew
45
The wonder of the ever-healing night,
No grief or loneliness or wrapt 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
Ye saw the
echoing hours go by, long-drawn,
Nor ever stirred, watching the
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,
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Still with soft throats unaltered
in your dream.
V
And slowly
as we heard you, day by day,
The stillness of enchanted reveries
Bound brain and spirit and half-closed
eyes,
In some divine sweet wonder-dream astray;
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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.
Morning and
noon and midnight exquisitely,
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Wrapt 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.
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