The Frogs

I1.
    Breathers of wisdom won without a quest,
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     Quaint uncouth dreamers, voices high and strange;
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   Flutists of lands where beauty hath no change,
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     And wintry grief is a forgotten guest,
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   Sweet murmurers of everlasting rest,
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     For whom glad days have ever yet to run,
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     And moments are as aeons, and the sun
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   But ever sunken half-way toward the west.1.
   Often to me who heard you in your day,
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    With close rapt ears, it could not choose but seem
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  That earth, our mother, searching in what way
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    Men's hearts might know her spirit's inmost-dream;
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      Ever at rest beneath life's change and stir,
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      Made you her soul, and bade you pipe for her.II2.
   In those mute days when spring was in her glee,
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     And hope was strong, we knew not why or how,
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     And earth, the mother, dreamed with brooding brow,
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   Musing on life, and what the hours might be,
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   When love should ripen to maternity,
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     Then like high flutes in silvery interchange
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     Ye piped with voices still and sweet and strange,
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   And ever as ye piped, on every tree2.
   The great buds swelled; among the pensive woods
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    The spirits of first flowers awoke and flung
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  From buried faces the close-fitting hoods,
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    And listened to your piping till they fell,
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  The frail spring-beauty with her perfumed bell,
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  The wind-flower, and the spotted adder-tongue.III3.
   All the day long, wherever pools might be
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     Among the golden meadows, where the air
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     Stood in a dream, as it were moorèd there
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   For ever in a noon-tide reverie,
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   Or where the birds made riot of their glee
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       In the still woods, and the hot sun shone down,
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       Crossed with warm lucent shadows on the brown
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   Leaf-paven pools, that bubbled dreamily, 3.
   Or far away in whispering river meads
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    And watery marshes where the brooding noon,
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  Full with the wonder of its own sweet boon,
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    Nestled and slept among the noiseless reeds,
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      Ye sat and murmured, motionless as they,
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      With eyes that dreamed beyond the night and day.IV4.
   And when day passed and over heaven's height,
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     Thin with the many stars and cool with dew,
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     The fingers of the deep hours slowly drew
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   The wonder of the ever-healing night,
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   No grief or loneliness or rapt delight
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     Or weight of silence ever brought to you
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     Slumber or rest; only your voices grew
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   More high and solemn; slowly with hushed flight4.
   Ye saw the echoing hours go by, long-drawn,
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    Nor ever stirred, watching with fathomless eyes,
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  And with your countless clear antiphonies
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    Filling the earth and heaven, even till dawn,
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      Last-risen, found you with its first pale gleam,
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      Still with soft throats unaltered in your dream.V5.
   And slowly as we heard you, day by day,
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     The stillness of enchanted reveries
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     Bound brain and spirit and half-closèd eyes,
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   In some divine sweet wonder-dream astray;
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   To us no sorrow or upreared dismay
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     Nor any discord came, but evermore
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     The voices of mankind, the outer roar,
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   Grew strange and murmurous, faint and far away. 5.
   Morning and noon and midnight exquisitely,
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    Rapt with your voices, this alone we knew,
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  Cities might change and fall, and men might die,
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    Secure were we, content to dream with you
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      That change and pain are shadows faint and fleet,
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      And dreams are real, and life is only sweet.