The flies blur sudden blasts of shine, Like wasted draughts of amber wine Spun high by reeling Bacchanals When Bacchus bredes his curling hair With vine-leaves, and from ev'ry lair Voluptuous Mænads lovely calls. They come, they come, a happy throng, The berriers with gibe and song; Deep pails brimmed black to tin-white eaves With luscious fruit kept cool with leaves Of aromatic sassafras, 'Twixt which some sparkling berry slips, Like laughter, from the purple mass, Wine swollen as Silenus' lips.
The tanned and sultry noon climbs high Up gleaming reaches of the sky; Below the balmy belts of pines The cliff-lunged river laps and shines; Adown the aromatic dell Sifts the warm harvest's musky smell. And, oh! above one sees and hears The brawny-throated harvesters; Their red brows beaded with the heat, By twos and threes among the wheat Flash their hot sickles' slenderness In loops of shine; and sing, and sing, Like some mad troop of piping Pan, Along the hills that swoon or ring With sounds of Ariel airiness That haunted freckled Caliban:
"O ho! O ho! 'tis noon, I say; The roses blow. Away, away, above the hay The burly bees to the roses gay Hum love-tunes all the livelong day, So low! so low! The roses' Minnesingers they."
Up velvet lawns of lilac skies The tawny moon begins to rise Behind low blue-black hills of trees, As rises from faint Siren seas, To rock in purple deeps, hip-hid, A virgin-bosom'd Oceanid. Gaunt shadows crouch by rock and wood, Like hairy Satyrs, grim and rude, Till the white Dryads of the moon Come noiseless in their silver shoon To beautify them with their love. The sweet, sad notes I hear, I hear, Beyond dim pines and mellow hills, Of some fair maiden harvester, The lovely Limnad of the grove Whose singing charms me while it kills:
"O deep! O deep! the twilight rare Pales on to sleep; And fair, so fair! fades the rich air. The fountain shines in its ferny lair, Where the cold Nymph sits in her oozy hair To weep, to weep, For a mortal youth who is not there."
The juice-big apples' sullen gold, Like lazy Sultans laughed and lolled 'Mid heavy mats of leaves that lay Green-flatten'd 'gainst the glaring day; And here a pear of rusty brown, And peaches on whose brows the down Waxed furry as the ears of Pan, And, like Diana's cheeks, whose tan Burnt tender secresies of fire, Or wan as Psyche's with desire Of lips that love to kiss or taste Voluptuous ripeness there sweet placed. And down the orchard vistas he,-- Barefooted, trousers out at knee, Face shadowing from the sloping sun A hat of straw, brim-sagging broad,-- Came, lowly whistling some vague tune, Upon the sunbeam-sprinkled road. Lank in his hand a twig with which In boyish thoughtlessness he crushed Rare pennyroyal myriads rich In pungent souls that warmly gushed. Before him whirled in rattling fear The saffron-bellied grasshopper; And ringing from the musky dells Came faint the cows' melodious bells, Where whimp'ring like a fretful hound The fountain bubbled up in sound.