Archibald Lampman

The Frogs

I1.
   Breathers of wisdom won without a quest,
.
    Quaint uncouth dreamers, voices high and strange;
.
  Flutists of lands where beauty hath no change,
.
    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,
.
    And moments are as aeons, and the sun
.
  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,
.
  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
.
    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
.
    Slumber or rest; only your voices grew
.
  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
.
    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
.
    Nor any discord came, but evermore
.
    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.
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