The Faun

I will go out to grass with that old King, For I am weary of clothes and cooks. I long to paddle with the throats of brooks, To lie down with the clover Tickling me all over, And watch the boughs above me sway and swing. Come, I will pluck off custom’s livery, Nor longer be a lackey to old Time. Time shall serve me, and at my feet shall fling The spoil of listless minutes. I shall climb The wild trees for my food, and run Through dale and upland as a fox runs free, Laugh for cool joy and sleep i’ the warm sun,⁠— And men will call me mad, like that old King. For I am woodland-nurtur’d, and have made Dryads my bedfellows, And I have played With the sleek Naiads in the splash of pools And made a mock of gowned and trousered fools. And I am half Faun now, and my heart goes Out to the forest and the crack of twigs, The drip of wet leaves, and the low soft laughter Of brooks that chuckle o’er old mossy jests And say them over to themselves, the nests Of squirrels, and the holes the chipmunk digs, Where through the branches the slant rays Dapple with sunlight the leaf-matted ground, And th’ wind comes with blown vesture rustling after, And through the woven lattice of crisp sound A bird’s song lightens like a maiden’s face. Oh, goodly damp smell of the ground! Oh, rough sweet bark of the trees! Oh, clear sharp cracklings of sound! Oh, life that’s a-thrill and a-bound With the vigor of boyhood and morning and the noontide’s rapture of ease! Was there ever a weary heart in the world? A lag in the body’s urge, or a flag of the spirit’s wing? Did a man’s heart ever break For a lost hope’s sake? For here there is lilt in the quiet and calm in the quiver of things. Ay, this old oak, gray-grown and knurled, Solemn and sturdy and big, Is as young of heart, as alert and elate in his rest, As the oriole there that clings to the tip of the twig And scolds at the wind that it buffets too rudely his nest.