Pastoral 'Lie strewn the white flocks'

Thus, thus begin the yearly rites
Are due to Pan on these bright nights;
His morn now riseth and invites
To sports, to dances, and delights:
All envious and profane, away.
This is the shepherds' holyday.

Strew, strew the glad and smiling ground
With every flower, yet not confound:
The primrose drop, the spring's own spouse.
Bright day's-eyes and the lips of cows;
The garden-star, the queen of May,
The rose, to crown the holyday.

Drop, drop, you violets; change your hues
Now red, now pale, as lovers use;
And in your death go out as well
As when you lived unto the smell:
That from your odour all may say,
This is the shepherds' holyday.

All ye woods and trees and bowers,
All ye virtues and ye powers
That inhabit in the lakes,
In the pleasant springs or breaks,
Move your feet to our sound,
Whilst we greet all this ground
With his honour and his name
That defends our flock from blame.

He is great and he is just;
He is ever good and must
Thus be honour'd. Daffodillies,
Roses, pinks, and lovèd lilies,
Let us fling, whilst we sing.
Ever holy, ever holy,
Ever honour'd, ever young!
Thus great Pan is ever sung!

— Tacet —

Where while I seek you, Echo, do you lie, Love? I love!
Yes, and you love me say, none other -- none? One!
You, you alone I love, for you there's no one else? One else!
Can you not say "I love you, Pan, none other"? Another!
By this you tell me all my joy is sped? Dead!
Say his cursèd name that stole my love that throve! Love!
What shall he do that loved, that loved as I? Die!

Naiads:
 Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
 Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep:
 For our kisses Iightlier run
 Than the traceries of the sun
 By the lolling water cast
 Up grey precipices vast.
 Lifting smooth, and warm and steep
 Out of the palely shimmering deep.

Fauns:
 I know a spot
 Where, to the sound of water sighing,
 The Naiads sing hushedly.

Naiads:
 Come, ye sorrowful, and take
 Kisses that are but half awake:
 For here are eyes O softer far
 Than the blossom of the star
 Upon the mothy twilit waters;
 And here are mouths whose gentle laughters
 Are but the echoes of the deep
 Laughing and murmuring in its sleep.

Fauns:
 I will repose
 Upon its banks and to the spring
 An answer make.

Naiads:
 But if ye sons of Sorrow come
 Only wishing to be numb:
 Our eyes are sad as bluebell posies
 Our breasts are soft as silken roses,
 And our hands are tenderer
 Than the breaths that scarce can stir
 The sunlit eglantine that is
 Murmurous with hidden bees.

Fauns:
 Your deeps hold dreams
 Lovelier than sleep.

Naiad: 
 Come, ye sorrowful, for here
 No voices sound but soft and clear
 Of mouths as lorn as is the rose
 That under water doth disclose,
 Amid her crimson petals torn,
 A heart as golden as the morn;
 And here are tresses languorous
 As weeds wander over us.
 And brows as holy and as bland
 As the honey-coloured sand
 Lying sun-entranced below
 The lazy water's limpid flow:
 Come, ye sorrowful, come!

Fauns:
 Sweet watervoices! Now must I
 Unto your sorrowings reply.

Little pigeon, grave and fleet,
Eye-of-fire, sweet Snowy-wings.
Think you that you can discover
On what great green down my lover
Lies by his sunny sheep and sings?

If you can, O go and greet
Him from me; say She is waiting ...
Not for him. O no! but, sweet,
Say June's nigh and doves, re-mating,
Fill the dancing noontide heat
With melodious debating.

Say the swift swoops from the beam;
Soon the cuckoo must cease calling;
Kingcups flare beside the stream,
That not glides now, but runs brawling;
That wet roses are asteam
In the sun and will be falling.

Say the chestnut sheds his bloom;
Honey from straw hivings oozes;
There's a nightjar in the coombe;
Venus nightly burns, and chooses
Most to blaze above my room;
That the laggard 'tis that loses.

Say the nights are warm and free,
And the great stars swarm above him;
But soon starless night must be.
Yet if all these do not move him,
Tell O tell -- but not too plainly! -- 
That I long for him and love him.

Demeter, rich in fruit, and rich in grain, 
may this corn be easy to win, and fruitful exceedingly!
Bind, ye bandsters, the sheaves, lest the wayfarer should cry, 
Men of straw were the workers here, ay and their hire was wasted!
See that the cut stubble faces the north wind, or the west;
'tis thus the grain waxes richest.

They that thresh corn should shun the noonday sleep:
at noon the chaff parts easiest from the straw.
As for the reapers, let them begin when the crested lark is waking,
and cease when he sleeps, but take holiday in the heat.
Boil the lentils better, thou miserly steward; 
take heed lest thou chop thy fingers when thou'rt splitting cumin-seed.

Now arched dark boughs hang dim and still;
The deep dew glistens up the hill;
Silence trembles. All is still.
Now the sweet siren of the woods,
Philomel, passionately broods,
Or, darkling, hymns love's wildest moods.
Danaë, fainting in her tower,
Feels a sudden sun swim lower,
Gasps beneath the starry shower.
Venus in the pomegranate grove
Flutters like a fluttering dove
Under young Adonis' love.
Leda longs until alight
In the reeds those wings of white
She hears beat the upper night.
Golden now the glowing moon,
Diana over Endymion
Downward bends as in a swoon.
Wherefore, since the gods agree
Youth is sweet and Night is free
And Love pleasure, should not we?

Shepherds all, maidens fair,
Fold your flocks up, for the air
'Gins to thicken, and the sun
Already his great course hath run.
Sweetest slumbers,
And soft silence, fall in numbers
On your eyelids! So farewell:
Thus'll end my evening's knell.