Page:Selected Poems (Huxley).djvu/50

 That mounts the unwrinkled zenith visibly, Where inspiration seeks its native sky. You fringes of a calm Sicilian lake, The sun's own mirror which I love to take, Silent beneath your starry flowers, tell ''How here I cut the hollow rushes, well Tamed by my skill, when on the glaucous gold Of distant lawns about their fountain cold A living whiteness stirs like a lazy wave; And at the first slow notes my panpipes gave These flocking swans, these naiads, rather, fly Or dive''. Noon burns inert and tawny dry, Nor marks how clean that Hymen slipped away From me who seek in song the real A. Wake, then, to the first ardour and the sight, O lonely faun, of the old fierce white light, With, lilies, one of you for innocence. Other than their lips' delicate pretence, The light caress that quiets treacherous lovers, My breast, I know not how to tell, discovers The bitten print of some immortal's kiss. But hush! a mystery so great as this I dare not tell, save to my double reed, Which, sharer of my every joy and need,