The Frogs.

I.     Breathers of wisdom won without a quest,     Quaint uncouth dreamers, voices high and strange,     Flutists of lands where beauty hath no change,     And wintery grief is a forgotten guest,     Sweet murmurers of everlasting rest,     For whom glad days have ever yet to run,     And moments are as ons, and the sun     But ever sunken half-way toward the west.     Often to me who heard you in your day,     With close wrapt ears, it could not choose but seem     That earth, our mother, searching in what way,     Men's hearts might know her spirit's inmost dream,     Ever at rest beneath life's change and stir,     Made you her soul, and bade you pipe for her.     II.     In those mute days when spring was in her glee,     And hope was strong, we knew not why or how,     And earth, the mother, dreamed with brooding brow.     Musing on life, and what the hours might be,     When love should ripen to maternity,     Then like high flutes in silvery interchange     Ye piped with voices still and sweet and strange,     And ever as ye piped, on every tree     The great buds swelled; among the pensive woods     The spirits of first flowers awoke and flung     From buried faces the close fitting hoods,     And listened to your piping till they fell,     The frail spring-beauty with her perfumed bell,     The wind-flower, and the spotted adder-tongue.     III.     All the day long, wherever pools might be     Among the golden meadows, where the air     Stood in a dream, as it were moord there     Forever in a noon-tide reverie,     Or where the birds made riot of their glee     In the still woods, and the hot sun shone down,     Crossed with warm lucent shadows on the brown     Leaf-paven pools, that bubbled dreamily,     Or far away in whispering river meads     And watery marshes where the brooding noon,     Full with the wonder of its own sweet boon,     Nestled and slept among the noiseless reeds,     Ye sat and murmured, motionless as they,     With eyes that dreamed beyond the night and day.     IV.     And when, day passed and over heaven's height,     Thin with the many stars and cool with dew,     The fingers of the deep hours slowly drew     The wonder of the ever-healing night,     No grief or loneliness or wrapt delight     Or weight of silence ever brought to you     Slumber or rest; only your voices grew     More high and solemn; slowly with hushed flight     Ye saw the echoing hours go by, long-drawn,     Nor ever stirred, watching with fathomless eyes,     And with your countless clear antiphonies     Filling the earth and heaven, even till dawn,     Last-risen, found you with its first pale gleam,     Still with soft throats unaltered in your dream.     V.     And slowly as we heard you, day by day,     The stillness of enchanted reveries     Bound brain and spirit and half-closd eyes,     In some divine sweet wonder-dream astray;     To us no sorrow or upreared dismay     Nor any discord came, but evermore     The voices of mankind, the outer roar,     Grew strange and murmurous, faint and far away.     Morning and noon and midnight exquisitely,     Wrapt with your voices, this alone we knew,     Cities might change and fall, and men might die,     Secure were we, content to dream with you,     That change and pain are shadows faint and fleet,     And dreams are real, and life is only sweet.