The Naiads' Music

(From 'A Faun's Holiday')     Come, ye sorrowful, and steep     Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep:     For our kisses lightlier run     Than the traceries of the sun     By the lolling water cast     Up grey precipices vast,     Lifting smooth and warm and steep     Out of the palely shimmering deep.     Come, ye sorrowful, and take     Kisses that are but half awake:     For here are eyes O softer far     Than the blossom of the star     Upon the mothy twilit waters,     And here are mouths whose gentle laughters     Are but the echoes of the deep     Laughing and murmuring in its sleep.     Come, ye sorrowful, and see     The raindrops flaming goldenly     On the stream's eddies overhead     And dragonflies with drops of red     In the crisp surface of each wing     Threading slant rains that flash and sing,     Or under the water-lily's cup,     From darkling depths, roll slowly up     The bronze flanks of an ancient bream     Into the hot sun's shattered beam,     Or over a sunk tree's bubbled hole     The perch stream in a golden shoal:     Come, ye sorrowful; our deep     Holds dreams lovelier than sleep.     But if ye sons of Sorrow come     Only wishing to be numb:     Our eyes are sad as bluebell posies,     Our breasts are soft as silken roses,     And our hands are tenderer     Than the breaths that scarce can stir     The sunlit eglantine that is     Murmurous with hidden bees.     Come, ye sorrowful, and steep     Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep.     Come, ye sorrowful, for here     No voices sound but fond and clear     Of mouths as lorn as is the rose     That under water doth disclose,     Amid her crimson petals torn,     A heart as golden as the morn;     And here are tresses languorous     As the weeds wander over us,     And brows as holy and as bland     As the honey-coloured sand     Lying sun-entranced below     The lazy water's limpid flow:     Come, ye sorrowful, and steep     Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep.