But aloof, on the lake-strand, For the Faun had been his friend. With long plumes, and soft brown seeds, Sitting on a tabled stone Where the shoreward ripple breaks. In the mountain-villages. Therefore now Olympus stands, Not to see Apollo's scorn; Ah, poor Faun, poor Faun! ah, poor Faun! And lie thou there, My laurel bough!— Empedocles. Scornful Apollo's ensign, lie thou there! Though thou hast been my shade in the world's heat— Though I have loved thee, lived in honouring thee Yet lie thou there, My laurel bough! I am weary of thee! I am weary of the solitude Where he who bears thee must abide ! Of the rocks of Parnassus, Of the gorge of Delphi, Of the moonlit peaks, and the caves. Thou guardest them, Apollo! Over the grave of the slain Pytho, But the solitude oppresses thy votary! The jars of men reach him not in thy valley But can life reach him? Thou fencest him from the multitude Who will fence him from himself? He hears nothing but the cry of the torrents, And the beating of his own heart. The air is thin, the veins swell The temples tighten and throb there! Take thy bough! set me free from my solitude! I have been enough alone! Where shall thy votary fly then? back to men?— And keep their friendly chatter at his ear, And haunt him, till the absence from himself, That other torment, grow unbearable; And he will fly to solitude again, And he will find its air too keen for him, And so change back; and many thousand times Be miserably bandied to and fro Like a sea-wave, betwixt the world and thee, Thou young, implacable God! and only death Bring him to poise. There is no other way. And yet what days were those, Parmenides! We had not lost our balance then, nor grown A flute note from the woods, Sunset over the sea! Seed-time and harvest, The reapers in the corn, The vinedresser in his vineyard, Fulness of life and power of feeling, ye Whose habit of thought is fix'd, who will not change, But in a world he loves not must subsist In ceaseless opposition, be the guard Of his own breast, fetter'd to what he guards, Joy and the outward world must die to him, |