Let me taste the old immortal
Indolence of life once more;
Not recalling nor foreseeing,
Let the great slow joys of being
Well my heart through as of yore! 
Let me taste the old immortal
Indolence of life once more!

Give me the old drink for rapture,
The delirium to drain,
All my fellows drank in plenty
At the Three Score Inns and Twenty
From the mountains to the main! 
Give me the old drink for rapture,
The delirium to drain!

Only make me over, April,
When the sap begins to stir! 
Make me man or make me woman,
Make me oaf or ape or human,
Cup of flower or cone of fir;
Make me anything but neuter
When the sap begins to stir!

THE FAUN.  A FRAGMENT.

I will go out to grass with that old King,
For I am weary of clothes and cooks. 
I long to lie along the banks of brooks,
And watch the boughs above me sway and swing. 
Come, I will pluck off custom’s livery,
Nor longer be a lackey to old Time. 
Time shall serve me, and at my feet shall fling
The spoil of listless minutes.  I shall climb
The wild trees for my food, and run
Through dale and upland as a fox runs free,
Laugh for cool joy and sleep i’ the warm sun,
And men will call me mad, like that old King.

For I am woodland-natured, and have made
Dryads my bedfellows,
And I have played
With the sleek Naiads in the splash of pools
And made a mock of gowned and trousered fools. 
Helen, none knows
Better than thou how like a Faun I strayed. 
And I am half Faun now, and my heart goes
Out to the forest and the crack of twigs,
The drip of wet leaves and the low soft laughter
Of brooks that chuckle o’er old mossy jests
And say them over to themselves, the nests
Of squirrels and the holes the chipmunk digs,
Where through the branches the slant rays
Dapple with sunlight the leaf-matted ground,
And the wind comes with blown vesture rustling after,
And through the woven lattice of crisp sound
A bird’s song lightens like a maiden’s face.

O wildwood Helen, let them strive and fret,
Those goggled men with their dissecting-knives!

Let them in charnel-houses pass their lives
And seek in death life’s secret!  And let
Those hard-faced worldlings prematurely old
Gnaw their thin lips with vain desire to get
Portia’s fair fame or Lesbia’s carcanet,
Or crown of Caesar or Catullus,
Apicius’ lampreys or Crassus’ gold! 
For these consider many things—­but yet
By land nor sea
They shall not find the way to Arcady,
The old home of the awful heart-dear Mother,
Whereto child-dreams and long rememberings lull us,
Far from the cares that overlay and smother
The memories of old woodland out-door mirth
In the dim first life-burst centuries ago,
The sense of the freedom and nearness of Earth—­
Nay, this they shall not know;
For who goes thither,
Leaves all the cark and clutch of his soul behind,
The doves defiled and the serpents shrined,
The hates that wax and the hopes that wither;
Nor does he journey, seeking where it be,
But wakes and finds himself in Arcady.