Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Joseph RussellTaylor

1596 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.