NOT HERE, O APOLLO!
It was a clay country of small fields that rose and fell slightly,
not in curves, but in stiff lines which ended abruptly in the low,
dividing hedges. Here and there we passed small woods of oak, hardly
more than overgrown hedges, where keepers shot the jays. There were few
streams--and those polluted. North and south the land rose up in some
pomp to steep hills planted with oak and beech and fir, and between
these, broad meadows and hop gardens, which now and then caught the
faint light on their dry brown or moist green and gleamed desirably.
The wind was in the north; it had rained in the night, and yet the
morning was dull and the sun white and small. There was some vice
in the wind or in the foliage or in the grass that now began to be
long--some vice that made the land sad and cold and unawakening, with
the surliness of a man who cannot sleep and will not rise.
The woods became more dense as we walked; not far ahead the oaks closed
in and expounded the contours of the land by their summits. But our
path led away from them, and we were about to lose sight of them when,
gently as the alighting of a bird, the sunlight dropped among the
tops of the oaks, which were yellow and purple with young leaves, and
blessed them. We turned. There was the sun held fast among the fresh
leaves and green trunks, as if Apollo had changed into a woodland god,
and forsaken the long lonely ways of heaven, and resolved no more to
spend a half of his days in the under world. How the nymphs clapped
their hands at this advent, abandoning Pan, and bringing to the new
lord all choicest herbs and highest fair grasses and golden flowers
that should make him content to be away from the clouds of sunset and
dawn, and blue flowers on which his feet should tread without envy of
the infinite paths of the sky, and white flowers that should suffice
for his shepherding in place of the flocks of the high desolate noon!
How they drove up grey dove and green woodpecker to shake their wings
and shine about the new god’s head as they flew among the branches!
How Pan himself, that does not heed dark hours, crept away from his
light-hearted nymphs and hid in the sombre reeds! “Ever-young Apollo!
Eternal Apollo! Young Apollo!” were the cries. “Why have we ever served
a goat-foot god?” And so they made haste to serve him with the clearest
honey of the wild bees, the cream from the farm that was most clean,
the fruits that yet preserved flavours of a past summer and autumn in
the granary close by, and fresh cresses from the spring; nor would some
of the little satyrs forget the golden ale and amber bread and cheese
of the colour of primroses; and all seemed assured that never again
would Apollo forsake the red and yellow leaves of the full oaks or the
mid-forest grasses or the lilied pools standing among willow and alder
and ash. And we saw that the light was passing in triumph slowly, and
accompanied by the cooing of doves, along the wood from oak top to oak
top.