Pan and Echo â The naiads' music
A. Bliss
Where while I seek you, Echo, do you lie, Love? I love!
Yes, and you love me say, none other -- none? One!
You, you alone I love, for you there's no one else? One else!
Can you not say "I love you, Pan, none other"? Another!
By this you tell me all my joy is sped? Dead!
Say his cursèd name that stole my love that throve! Love!
What shall he do that loved, that loved as I? Die!
Naiads:
Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep:
For our kisses Iightlier run
Than the traceries of the sun
By the lolling water cast
Up grey precipices vast.
Lifting smooth, and warm and steep
Out of the palely shimmering deep.
Fauns:
I know a spot
Where, to the sound of water sighing,
The Naiads sing hushedly.
Naiads:
Come, ye sorrowful, and take
Kisses that are but half awake:
For here are eyes O softer far
Than the blossom of the star
Upon the mothy twilit waters;
And here are mouths whose gentle laughters
Are but the echoes of the deep
Laughing and murmuring in its sleep.
Fauns:
I will repose
Upon its banks and to the spring
An answer make.
Naiads:
But if ye sons of Sorrow come
Only wishing to be numb:
Our eyes are sad as bluebell posies
Our breasts are soft as silken roses,
And our hands are tenderer
Than the breaths that scarce can stir
The sunlit eglantine that is
Murmurous with hidden bees.
Fauns:
Your deeps hold dreams
Lovelier than sleep.
Naiad:
Come, ye sorrowful, for here
No voices sound but soft and clear
Of mouths as lorn as is the rose
That under water doth disclose,
Amid her crimson petals torn,
A heart as golden as the morn;
And here are tresses languorous
As weeds wander over us.
And brows as holy and as bland
As the honey-coloured sand
Lying sun-entranced below
The lazy water's limpid flow:
Come, ye sorrowful, come!
Fauns:
Sweet watervoices! Now must I
Unto your sorrowings reply.