The Flute

PUFFED up with luring to her knees The rabbits from the blackberries, Quaint little satyrs, and shy and mute, That limped reluctant to the flute, She needs must seek the forest’s womb And pipe up tigers from green gloom. Grouped round the dreaming oaten quill Those sumptuous savages were still, Rich spectral beasts that feared to stir, And haughty and wistful gazed on her, And swayed their sleepy masks in time And growled a drowsy under-rhyme. Tune done, that agile fancy stopped, The lingering notes in mid-air dropped; The flute stole from her parted kiss, Her cheeks for sorcery burned with bliss. Then grew a deadly muttering there; And sudden yellow eyes aglare Blazed furious over wrinkled lips And teeth on her. Her finger-tips Trembled a little as they woke The second tune beneath the oak, A lilt that charmed and lulled to mute The uneasy soul within the brute. And all that warbling ecstasy Was winged with terror, and daintily Ceased on the wild and tragic face And desperate huddle of her grace: For with the hush began to gride Their sullen, soulless, evil-eyed, Intolerable rage, blown hot Upon her. The third tune was caught With trouble from unuttered air: And still as autumn they sat there. The breathless seventh tune died out Like withered laughter: all about The frantic silence ran a race. She stirred, she moaned, she crawled a space. There leaped a vast and thunderous roar; A huge heart-shaking tumult tore About the oak. Filing away, They trod the stained flute where it lay.