Apollo and Marsyas and Other Poems

The contest of the Satyr with the God,

Oh who shall end it? Who shall end the strife

That fills all Art, all Nature and all Life,

And give the right of flaying with a nod?

Oh who when radiant noontide’s last note dies,

And darkness with its mystery draws near,

Shall bid the strains of twilight not arise

That fill the soul with wistfulness or fear?

Man gives his love in turn, he knows not why,

To sun or gloom according to his mood;

His ear, his heart, alternately is woo’d

By Nature’s carol or by Nature’s sigh.

And Marsyas’ reed-pipe and Apollo’s lyre

Make endless competition upon earth,

As men prefer the charm of vague desire,

Or charm of bright serenity and mirth.

But not alone the wistful strains of eve

Mean unseen Marsyas speaking to the heart;

Nor is he near, in Nature and in Art,

Alone where yearning makes the bosom heave.

Often in tones more passionate he wails,

Pensive no more but fiercely wild and shrill,

And fills the soul with rapture as it quails,

And charms us with the very fear of ill.

Wherever lonely Nature claims her right

Upon man’s love, and her wild fitful voice

With flute-like wailings makes his ear rejoice

In the wild music of a stormy night;

Wherever haunting Fancy fills the gloom

With ghostly sounds, with evil spirits’ sobs,

And exiled souls seem to bewail their doom,

And, half seduced, the heart with vague fear throbs;

Wherever Poetry with magic word

Lets Passion’s loosened elements fly free,

And hiss and thunder like a storm-churned sea,

And rave and howl—there Marsyas’ note is heard.

Oh, I have felt his music in my soul

Outwail the wailing wind when every tone

Has made my fancy, bursting all control,

Create new realms as wild as are his own,

With shapes of fear, with dread fantastic spells,

And sights more wondrous than the restless stream

Of visions in a Haschish-eater’s dream,

Where whirl and eddy countless heavens and hells.

And yet I love the light, nor am I one

Bred in the darkness of Cimmerian caves,

Who shrinks with blinking eyelids from the sun,

When with the dawn he leaps on laughing waves,

The sounds which that great Dorian God, whose glance

Kindles the blushes of the pale sea foam,

Draws from his beam-stringed lyre come thrilling home,

And make the ripples of my spirit dance.