Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/231

      Or could this same bower (I fancied)
      Be the work of Dryad strong;
      Who, surviving all that chanced
      In the world's old pagan wrong,
Lay hid, feeding in the woodland, on the last true poet's song?

      Or was this the house of fairies,
      Left, because of the rough ways,
      Unassoiled by Ave Marys
      Which the passing pilgrim prays,—
And beyond St. Catherine's chiming, on the blessed Sabbath days?

      So, young muser, I sate listening
      To my Fancy's wildest word—
      On a sudden, through the glistening
      Leaves around, a little stirred,
Came a sound, a sense of music, which was rather felt than heard.

      Softly, finely, it inwound me—
      From the world it shut me in,—
      Like a fountain falling round me,
      Which with silver waters thin
Clips a little marble Naiad, sitting smilingly within.

      Whence the music came, who knoweth?
      I know nothing. But indeed
      Pan or Faunus never bloweth
      So much sweetness from a reed,
"Which has sucked the milk of waters, at the oldest riverhead.

      Never lark the sun can waken
      With such sweetness! when the lark,
      The high planets overtaking
      In the half-evanished Dark,
Casts his singing to their singing, like an arrow to the mark.