Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ST. JOHN AND THE FAUN, by GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ST. JOHN AND THE FAUN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: O blest imagination!
Last Line: Which is immortal art.
Subject(s): Amalfi, Italy; Imagination; St. John, Henry (1678-1751); Fancy; Viscount Bolingbroke


I

O blest Imagination!
Bright power beneath man's lid,
That in apparent beauty
Unveils the beauty hid!
In the gleaming of the instant
Abides the immortal thing;
Our souls that voyage unspeaking
Press forward, wing and wing;
From every passing object
A brighter radiance pours;
The Lethe of our daily lives
Sweeps by eternal shores.

II

On the deep below Amalfi,
Where the long roll of the wave
Slowly breathed, and slipped beneath me
To gray cliff and sounding cave,
Came a boat-load of dark fishers,
Passed, and on the bright sea shone;
There, the vision of a moment,
I beheld the young St. John.

At the stern the boy stood bending
Full his dreaming gaze on me;
Inexorably spread between us
Flashed the blue strait of the sea;
Slow receding, -- distant, -- distant, --
While my bosom scarce drew breath, --
Dreaming eyes on my eyes dreaming
Holy beauty without death.

III

In the cloudland o'er Amalfi,
Where with mists the deep ravine
Like a cauldron smoked, and, clearing,
Showed, far down, the pictured scene,
Capes and bays and peaks and ocean,
And the city, like a gem,
Set in circlets of pale azure
That her beauty ring and hem, --
Once, returning from the chasm
By the mountain's woodland way,
Underneath the oak and chestnut
Where I loved to make delay,
(And dark boys and girls with faggots
Would pass near on that wild lawn,
And at times they brought me rosebuds),
There one day I saw a faun.

The wood was still with noontide,
The very trees seemed lone,
When from a neighboring thicket
His moon-eyes on me shone,
Motionless, and bright, and staring,
And with a startled grace;
As nature, wildly magical
Was the beauty of his face;

And as some gentle creature
That, curious, has fear,
Dumb he stood and gazed upon me,
But did not venture near;
And I moved not, nor motioned,
Nor gave him any sign,
Nor broke the momentary spell
Of the old world divine.

IV

Love, with no other agent
Save communion by the eye,
Evoked from those bright creatures
Our secret unity;
There, flowering from old ages,
Hung on time's blossoming stem
All that fairest was in me
Or loveliest in them;
And truly it was happiness
Unto a poet's heart
To find that living in his breast
Which is immortal art.





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