Monotonously the solemn reeds Waved to our passing; Ahead the canal shimmered, blotched green by the water-weeds. With a grinding swing And see-saw of sound, The steamer slunk down the canal.
That night from a dingy hotel room, I saw the moon, like a golden gong, Redly loom Across the lake; like a golden gong In a temple, which a priest ere long Will strike into throbbing song, To wake some silent twinkling city to prayer. The lake waves were flakes of red gold, Burnished to copper, Gold, red as the tangled gleam Of sunlight in your hair.
In earth's womb the old gods stir, Fierce chthonian dieties of old time. With cymbals and rattle of castanets, And shriek of slug-horns, the North Wind Bows the oak and the moaning fir, On russet hills and by roadsides stiff with rime.
In nature, dead, the life gods stir, From Rhadamanthus and the Isles, Where Saturn rules the Age of Gold, Come old, old ghosts of bygone gods; While dim mists earth's outlines blur, And drip all night from lichen-greened roof-tiles.
In men's hearts the mad gods rise And fill the streets with revelling, With torchlight that glances on frozen pools, With tapers starring the thick-fogged night, A-dance, like strayed fireflies, 'Mid dim mad throngs who Saturn's orisons sing.
In driven clouds the old gods come, When fogs the face of Apollo have veiled; A fear of things, unhallowed, strange, And a fierce free joy flares in the land. Men mutter runes in language dead, By night, with rumbling drum, In quaking groves where the woodland spirits are hailed.
To earth's brood of souls of old, With covered heads and aspen wands, Mist-shrouded priests do ancient rites; The black ram's fleece is stained with blood, That steams, dull red on the frozen ground; And pale votaries shiver with the cold, That numbs the earth, and etches patterned mirrors on the ponds.
Is it the song of a meadow lark Off the brown, sere salt marshes, Or the eager patches in dooryards Of yellow and pale lilac crocuses; Or else the suburban street golden with sunlight, And the bare branches of elm trees Twined in the delicate sky? Or is it the merry piping Of a distant hurdy-gurdy?-- That makes me so weary and faint with desire For strange lands and new scents; For the rough-rhythmed clank Of train couplings at night, And the stormy, gay-tinted sunrises That shade with purple the contours Of far-off, unfamiliar hills.