O Hades! O false gods! false to yourselves!
O Hades, 'twas thy brother gave her thee
Without a mother's sanction or her knowledge!
Thou bor'st her to the dreadful gulfs below,
And made her queen, a shadowy queen of shades,
Queen of the fiery flood and iron realms,
Eternal torture and eternal pain.
On blossomed plains in Far Trinacria
A maiden,—the dark cascade of whose hair
Was deep as midnight circled and crowned with stars,—
Hair dark as rays that brighten with the moon,—
Went gathering flowers with the Oceanids,
Lily and rose and pale Narcissus,—who
Was Echo's passion once, a flower now
That stares forever in the lake's still glass,
Whose ripple breaks its image, flickering seen,—
As once with tears it broke beneath his eyes,—
With the fast-falling dew that fills its heart:
When suddenly there rose with iron wain,
With iron wain and steeds, a shape like death,
'Mid sallow smoke and sulphur and pale fires,
Its countenance ghastly, and its hair and eyes
Like the blue flame of sulphur: in its arms,
Its sooty arms, where like to supple steel
The mighty muscles lay, unto its breast,
Such as its arms, it drew her fragile form
As bosomed bulks of tempest in their joy
With arms of winds drag to their black embrace
A fairy mist that flecks with white the summer,
With wings of shadeless white, and 'tis no more
Heaved on the rapture of the thunder's heart.
The snowy flowers shuddered and grew still;
With withered heads they bowed, and on the stream—
Where all the day it was their wont to stand
In silence gazing at their loveliness—
Laid their fair faces limp and shriveled white.
Flames whipped the air like fiery scorpions,
Blasting and burning all the fragrant myths
That haunt the dew and lair in bloom and breeze.
O foam-fair daughters of Oceanus!
In vain you seek your mate and chide the flowers
For hiding her beneath their palms of snow:
Ask of that shell, that conch of twisted pearl,
Which, like a spirit of the singing sea,
Moans at your pallid feet made wet with spray:
Then, sitting by the tumbling blue of waves,
Mourn to the waters and the ribbéd sands,
The falseness of the god who grasps the storm.
DEMETER
Eternal pouring in her lonely path
The wells of sorrow lay. I see her now,—
Methinks I see her now,—an awful shape
Guiding her dragon-team in frenzied search
From Argive lands unto the jeweled shores
Of the remotest Ind where Usha's hand
Soothed her grief-shadowed brow with kindly touch,
And Savitar breathed sympathy from the skies
O'er uttermost regions of the faneless Brahm.
In melancholy search I see her roam
The Himalayas,—world-dividing,—pale
'Mid ice and snow, through mists and night and storm;
Then back again with that wild mother woe
Fueling the anguished fire of her eyes,—
Back where old Atlas groans beneath the world,
And the Cimmerian twilight weighs the soul.
Deep was her sleep in Persia's haunted vales,
Where many a languid Philomela moaned
Her heart to rest with heartbreak melody.
I see her near Ionia's swelling seas
Cull from the sands a labyrinthine shell,
Hollowing its spiral murmur to her ear,—
A pearly mouth against an ear of pearl,—
In hope some message of Persephone
It might impart; then finding all in vain,
In anguish and despair, cast it afar,
To watch the salt-spray flash, like some soft plume
Dropped from the wings of Eros, where it fell.
I see her take a flute of coral from
A listening Triton; and on Ithakan rocks
High seated at the starry close of day,—
When sad the moon rose from her salty couch,
Gazing with sorrow on her face of sorrow,—
Pipe pensive airs,—plaintive as Sirens sing
In streaming caves beneath the ocean wall,—
Till hoar Poseidon cleared his wrinkled front
And stilled his surgy clamors to a sigh.
This do I see, and more: Behold, with fear!
I see her 'mid the lonely groves of Crete,
Frighten the dun deer from th' o'ervaulted green
Of thickest boscage, searching every covert
With terror of her torches and her wail,
"Persephone! Persephone!" till the pines
Of mist-swathed Dicte shuddered through their miles,
The panther roared down in the stream-mad gorge,
And Echo shrieked from chasm to answering chasm,
"Persephone!" bewildered with her woe:
As wild as when she echoed the despair,
Dishevel-haired, of maidens, wailing borne,—
Athenian tribute,—to that King of Crete,
Great Minos, when the Minotaur they saw
Grim, crouching in his labyrinth of stone.
DIONYSOS
"Io! Bacchus! Bacchus! Io! Io!
O Dionysos! Dionysos! ivy-crowned!
O let me sing thy triumph ere I die!"
I slept; and dreamed a Mænad came to me:
A harp of hollow agate strung with gold
Wailed 'neath her waxen fingers, and her heart
Under its gauze, through which the moonlight shone,
Kept time with its wild throbbings to her song.
"Ægeus sleeps, O Dionysos! sleeps
Beneath the restless waves that sigh his name
Eternally at my dew-glistening feet.
Here 'twas he died, O Dionysos! here
The great king died for whom is named this sea.—
O let me sing thy triumph ere I die!
"With the shrill syrinx and the kissing clang
Of silver cymbals, and the sound of flutes,
O pard-drawn youth, thou dist awake the world
To joy and pleasure with thy sunny wine!
Mad'st India bow and the dun, flooding Nile
Grow purple with the murex of the wine
Cast from the fullness of Silenus' cup,
While yet the heavens of heat saw sarabands
Whirl 'mid the redness of the Libyan sands,
That drank the spilth of Bacchus, sparkling-spun
From the Bacchante bowl, a beaded red
O'er the slant edge, that twinkled in the sun,
The tiger sun fierce-glaring overhead.
"What made gold Horus smile with golden lips?
Anubis dire forget his ghosts to lead
To Hell's profoundness?—He, who stayed to sip
One winking bubble from the wine-god's cup,
And, captive ever after, joined thy train?—
What made Osiris, 'mid the palms of Nile,
Leave Isis dreaming, and the frolic Pan's
Wild trebles follow as a roaring bull,
Far as the fanes of Indra; he who long
Was mourned in Memphis by his tawny priests?—
Io! Bacchus! Bacchus! Io! Io!
The brimming purple of thy hollow gold
They tasted and, 'though gods, they worship'd too!
"Sad Echo sat once in a spiral cave;
She, from its sea-dyed labyrinth of rock,
Saw the long pageant dancing on the strand,
Where Nereus slept upon an isle of crags,
And o'er the slope of his far-foaming head
The strangeness of the orgies wildly cried,
Till the gray god awoke, at first in rage;
Serened his face then; stretched a welcoming hand
With civil utterance for the Bacchus horn.
But Echo followed not; instead, she sits
Among her crags remembering that wild cry,
That nomad sound still haunting all her dreams,
Confusing all her speech, that naught can say
Save warring words bewildering her ears
Like waves reverberant in a deep sea-cave.
THE PAPHIAN VENUS
With anxious eyes and dry, expectant lips,
Within the sculptured stoa by the sea,
All day she waited while, like ghostly ships,
Long clouds rolled over Paphos: the wild bee
Hung in the sultry poppy, half asleep,
Beside the shepherd and his drowsy sheep.
White-robed she waited day by day; alone
With the white temple's shrined concupiscence,
The Paphian goddess on her obscene throne,
Binding all chastity to violence,
All innocent to lust that feels no shame—
Venus Mylitta born of filth and flame.
So must they haunt her marble portico,
The devotees of passion, passion-pale
As moonlight streaming through the stormy snow;
Dark eyes desirous of the stranger sail,—
The gods shall bring across the Cyprian Sea,
And him elected to their mastery.
A priestess of the temple came, when eve
Blazed, like a satrap's triumph, in the west;
And watched her listening to the ocean's heave,
Dusk's golden glory on her face and breast,
And in her hair the rosy wind's caress,—
Pitying her dedicated tenderness.
When out of darkness night persuades the stars,
A dream shall bend above her saying, "Soon
A barque shall come with purple sails and spars,
Sailing from Tarsus 'neath a low white moon;
And thou shalt see one in a robe of Tyre
Facing toward thee like the god Desire.
"Rise then! as, clad in starlight, riseth night—
Thy nakedness clad on with loveliness!
So shalt thou see him, like the god Delight,
Breast through the foam and climb the cliff to press
Hot lips to thine and lead thee in before
Love's awful presence where ye shall adore."
Thus at her heart the vision entered in,
With lips of lust the lips of song had kissed,
And eyes of passion laughing with sweet sin,
A starry splendor robed in amethyst,
Seen like that star set in the glittering gloam—
Venus Mylitta born of fire and foam.
So shall she dream until, near middle night,—
When on the blackness of the ocean's rim
The moon, like some war-galleon all alight
With blazing battle, from the sea shall swim,—
A shadow, with inviolate lips and eyes,
Shall rise before her speaking in this wise:
"So hast thou heard the promises of one,—
Of her, with whom the God of gods is wroth,—
For whom was prophesied at Babylon
The second death—Chaldæan Mylidoth!
Whose feet take hold on darkness and despair,
Hissing destruction in her heart and hair!
"Wouldst thou behold the vessel she would bring?—
A wreck! ten hundred years have smeared with slime:
A hulk! where all abominations cling,
The spawn and vermin of the seas of time:
Wild waves have rotted it, fierce suns have scorched,
Mad winds have tossed and stormy stars have torched.
"Can lust give birth to love! The vile and foul
Be mother to beauty? Lo! can this thing be?—
A monster like a man shall rise and howl
Upon the wreck across the crawling sea,
Then plunge; and swim unto thee; like an ape,
A beast all belly.—Thou canst not escape!"
Gone was the shadow with the suffering brow;
And in the temple's porch she lay and wept,
Alone with night, the ocean, and her vow.
Then up the east the moon's full splendor swept,
And, dark between it—wreck or argosy?—
A sudden vessel far away at sea.
GARGAPHIE
"Succinctæ sacra Dianæ."—Ovid.
I
There the ragged sunlight lay
Tawny on thick ferns and gray
On dark waters: dimmer,
Lone and deep, the cypress grove
Bowered mystery and wove
Braided lights, like those that love
On the pearl plumes of a dove
Faint to gleam and glimmer.
II
There centennial pine and oak
Into stormy utterance broke:
Hollow rocks gloomed, slanting,
Echoing in dim arcade,
Looming with long moss, that made
Twilight streaks in tatters laid:
Where the wild hart, hunt-affrayed,
Plunged the water, panting.
Poppies of a sleepy gold
Mooned the gray-green darkness rolled
Down its vistas, making
Wisp-like blurs of flame. And pale
Stole the dim deer down the vale:
And the haunting nightingale
Sang unseen—the olden tale
All its hurt heart breaking.
IV
There the hazy serpolet,
Dewy cistus, blooming wet,
Blushed on bank and boulder:
There the cyclamen, as wan
As faint footsteps of the Dawn,
Carpeted the spotted lawn:
Where the nude nymph, dripping drawn,
Sloped a flower-white shoulder.
V
In the citrine shadow there
What tall presences and fair,
Godlike, lingered!—gracious
As the rock-rose there that grew:—
Delicate and dim as dew
Stepped from out the oaks, and drew
Faun-like forms to follow, who
Filled the forest spacious!
VI
Guarded that Bœotian
Valley so no foot of man
Soiled its silence holy
With profaning tread—save one,
The Hyantian: Actæon,
Who beheld but was undone
By Diana's wrath, that none—
'Though with magic moly,—
VII
Might escape.—That valley sleeps
Lost to us: enchantment keeps
Sacred still its banished
Bowers that no man may see,
Fountains that her deity
Haunts, and every rock and tree
Where her hunt goes swinging free
As in ages vanished.
THE FAUN
The joys that touched thee once, be mine!
The sympathies of sky and sea,
The friendship of each rock and pine,
That made thy lonely life, ah me!
In Tempe or in Gargaphie.
Such joy as thou didst feel when first,
On some wild crag, thou stood'st alone
And watched the mountain tempest burst,
With streaming thunder, lightning sown,
On Latmos or on Pelion.
Thy awe! when crowned with vastness, Night
And Silence ruled the deep's abyss;
And through dark leaves thou saw'st the white
Breasts of the starry maids who kiss
Pale feet of moony Artemis.
Thy dreams! when, breasting matted weeds
Of Arethusa, thou didst hear
The music of the wind-swept reeds;
And down dim forest-ways drew near
Shy herds of slim Arcadian deer.
Thy wisdom! that knew naught but love
And beauty, with which love is fraught;
The wisdom of the heart—whereof
All noblest passions spring—that thought
As Nature thinks, "All else is naught."
Thy hope! wherein To-morrow set
No shadow; hope that, lacking care
And retrospect, held no regret,
But bloomed in rainbows everywhere
Filling with gladness all the air.
These were thine all: in all life's moods
Embracing all of happiness:
And when within thy long-loved woods
Didst lay thee down to die, no less
Thy happiness stood by to bless.
APOLLO
I
All the Lydian notes revealing,
Son of Leto, oh, come stealing
As the wind Thessalian rivers
Whisper of! the wind that shivers
Every ripple into stars,
In the sunlight's golden bars.
Touch thy harp, that haunts the oaks,
With the mastery that invokes
Naiad music of the fount,
Oread music of the mount;
And such satyr song as keeps
Revel on Lycæan steeps,
When night nods, a Mænad shape,
Purple with dusk's staining grape.
Wake such chords as dewy grounds
Echo when no mortal hounds
Bell the hunt, whose spear-point shines
Through Arcadia's tangled vines,
When the half-awakened Dawn,
Dreaming on a mountain lawn,
Lets her golden sandals lie
And walks barefooted through the sky;
And by Arethusa's bank,
Swift upon the red hart's flank,
Drives Diana's buskined band
Down the cistus-blossomed strand.
Then Love's minors, swooning o'er
The mountain hush, the ocean roar,
As Selene, stealing, sails
Over Lemnos' lakes to vales
Where Endymion dreams and feels
Love her stolen kiss reveals.
II
Thou hast sung of Helicon:
How the sister Muses won
From the nine Pierides
Empire o'er the harmonies.
Thou hast sung of Tempe's maid,
And the sudden laurel's aid.
Thou hast sung of many loves
Of the gods that haunt the groves
Where the marble altar stands
Rose-heaped by the balmy hands
Of Romance and Beauty; where,
High upon the temple stair,
Priest-like, bay-crowned, white of hair,
Old Tradition, looking up,
Pours libation from his cup.
Thou hast sung, all sweet of tongue,
As once wild Amphion sung,
Songs,—Parnassian rocks,—that swung
Each in its lyric niche, and massed
Such mural heights of song and vast,
Melodious walls of poesy,
That Time himself shall not outlast,
Enduring as eternity.
III
Ours shall be no island song,
Suited to a maiden throng,
Dancing with their wreaths of roses
To the double-flute's soft closes!—
But a Nation's! whose large eyes
With life's liberty are wise,
And consenting sympathies
Of all arts and sciences.
She! who stands above the storms
With truth's thunder in her arms,
And the star-serenity
Of her hope bound burningly
Round her brow; and at her knee
The Spirit of Progress who is shod
With ethereal fire of God....
Yea! thy last shall still be first—
Some wild epopee to burst
With such organ notes as rang
When the stars of morning sang,
And the Sons of Heaven sent
Shoutings through the firmament;
As our years have justified
And the stars have prophesied.
1886.
JOTUNHEIM
I
Beyond the Northern Lights, in regions haunted
Of twilight, where the world is glacier planted,
And pale as Loké in his cavern when
The serpent's slaver burns him to the bones,
I saw the phantasms of gigantic men,
The prototypes of vastness, quarrying stones;
Great blocks of winter, glittering with the morn's
And evening's colors,—wild prismatic tones
Of boreal beauty.—Like the three gray Norns,
Silence and solitude and terror loomed
Around them where they labored. Walls arose,
Vast as the Andes when creation boomed
Insurgent fire; and through the rushing snows
Enormous battlements of tremendous ice,
Bastioned and turreted, I saw arise.
II
But who can sing the workmanship gigantic
That reared within its coruscating dome
The roaring fountain, hurling an Atlantic
Of liquid ice that flashed with flame and foam?
An opal spirit, various and many formed,—
In whose clear heart reverberant fire stormed,—
Seemed its inhabitant; and through pale halls,
And deep diaphanous walls,
And corridors of whiteness,
Auroral colors swarmed,
As rosy-flickering stains,
Or lambent green, or gold, or crimson, warmed
The pulsing crystal of the spirit's veins
With ever-changing brightness.
And through the Arctic night there went a voice,
As if the ancient Earth cried out, "Rejoice!"
"My heart is full of lightness!"
III
Here well might Thor, the god of war,
Harness the whirlwinds to his car,
While, mailed in storm, his iron arm
Heaves high his hammer's lava-form,
And red and black his beard streams back,
Like some fierce torrent scoriac,
Whose earthquake light glares through the night
Around some dark volcanic height;
And through the skies Valkyrian cries
Trumpet, as battleward he flies,
Death in his hair and havoc in his eyes.
IV
Still in my dreams I hear that fountain flowing;
Beyond all seeing and beyond all knowing;
Still in my dreams I see those wild walls glowing
With hues, Aurora-kissed;
And through huge halls fantastic phantoms going,
Vast shapes of snow and mist,—
Sonorous clarions of the tempest blowing,—
That trail dark banners by,
Cloudlike, underneath the sky
Of the caverned dome on high,
Carbuncle and amethyst.—
Still I hear the ululation
Of their stormy exultation,
Multitudinous, and blending
In hoarse echoes, far, unending;
And, through halls of fog and frost,
Howling back, like madness lost
In the moonless mansion of
Death and demon-haunted love.
Still in my dreams I hear the mermaid singing;
The mermaid music at its portal ringing;
The mermaid song, that hinged with gold its door,
And, whispering evermore,
Hushed the ponderous hurl and roar
And vast æolian thunder
Of the chained tempests under
The frozen cataracts that were its floor.—
And, blinding beautiful, I still behold
The mermaid there, combing her locks of gold,
While at her feet, green as the Northern Seas,
Gambol her flocks of seals and walruses;
While, like a drift, her dog,—a Polar bear,—
Lies by her, glowering through his shaggy hair.
VI
O wondrous house, built by supernal hands
In vague and ultimate lands!
Thy architects were behemoth wind and cloud,
That, laboring loud,
Mountained thy world foundations and uplifted
Thy skyey bastions drifted
Of piled eternities of ice and snow;
Where storms, like ploughmen, go,
Ploughing the deeps with awful hurricane;
Where, spouting icy rain,
The huge whale wallows; and through furious hail
Th' explorer's tattered sail
Drives like the wing of some terrific bird,
Where wreck and famine herd.—
VII
Home of the red Auroras and the gods!
He who profanes thy perilous threshold,—where
The ancient centuries lair,
And, glacier-throned, thy monarch, Winter, nods,—
Let him beware!
Lest coming on that hoary presence there,
Whose pitiless hand,
Above that hungry land,
An iceberg wields as sceptre, and whose crown
The North Star is, set in a band of frost,
He, too, shall feel the bitterness of that frown,
And, turned to stone, forevermore be lost.
DIONYSIA
The day is dead; and in the west
The slender crescent of the moon—
Diana's crystal-kindled crest—
Sinks hillward in a silvery swoon.
What is the murmur in the dell?
The stealthy whisper and the drip?
A Dryad with her leaf-light trip?
A Naiad o'er her fountain well?—
Who, with white fingers for her comb,
Sleeks her blue hair, and from its curls
Showers slim minnows and pale pearls,
And hollow music of the foam.
What is it in the vistaed ways
That leans and springs, and stoops and sways?—
The naked limbs of one who flees?
An Oread who hesitates
Before the Satyr form that waits,
Crouching to leap, that there she sees?
Or under boughs, reclining cool,
A Hamadryad, like a pool
Of moonlight, palely beautiful?
Or Limnad, with her lilied face,
More lovely than the misty lace
That haunts a star in a firefly place?
Or is it some Leimoniad
In wildwood flowers dimly clad?
Oblong blossoms white as froth,
Or mottled like the tiger-moth;
Or brindled as the brows of death,
Wild of hue and wild of breath:
Here ethereal flame and milk
Blent with velvet and with silk;
Here an iridescent glow
Mixed with satin and with snow:
Pansy, poppy and the pale
Serpolet and galingale;
Mandrake and anemone,
Honey-reservoirs o' the bee;
Cistus and the cyclamen,—
Cheeked like blushing Hebe this,
And the other white as is
Bubbled milk of Venus when
Cupid's baby mouth is pressed,
Rosy, to her rosy breast.
And, besides, all flowers that mate
With aroma, and in hue
Stars and rainbows duplicate
Here on earth for me and you.
Yea! at last mine eyes can see!
'Tis no shadow of the tree
Swaying softly there, but she!—
Mænad, Bassarid, Bacchant,
What you will, who doth enchant
Night with sensuous nudity.
Lo! again I hear her pant
Breasting through the dewy glooms—
Through the glow-worm gleams and glowers
Of the starlight; wood-perfumes
Swoon around her and frail showers
Of the leaflet-tilted rain.
Lo! like love, she comes again
Through the pale voluptuous dusk,
Sweet of limb with breasts of musk.
With her lips, like blossoms, breathing
Honeyed pungence of her kiss,
And her auburn tresses wreathing
Like umbrageous helichrys,
There she stands, like flame and snow,
In the moon's ambrosial glow,
Both her shapely loins low-looped
With the balmy blossoms, drooped,
Of the deep amaracus.
Spiritual, yet sensual,
Lo, she ever greets me thus
In my vision; white and tall,
Her delicious body there,—
Raimented with amorous air,—
To my mind expresses all
The allurements of the world.
And once more I seem to feel
On my soul, like frenzy, hurled
All the passionate past.—I reel,
Greek again in ancient Greece,
In the Pyrrhic revelries;
In the mad and Mænad dance;
Onward dragged with violence:
Pan and old Silenus and
Faunus and a Bacchant band
Round me. Wild my wine-stained hand
O'er tumultuous hair is lifted;
While the flushed and Phallic orgies
Whirl around me; and the marges
Of the wood are torn and rifted
With lascivious laugh and shout.
And barbarian there again,—
Shameless with the shameless rout,
Bacchus lusting in each vein,—
With her pagan lips on mine,
Like a god made drunk with wine,
On I reel; and in the revels
Her loose hair, the dance dishevels,
Blows, and 'thwart my vision swims
All the splendor of her limbs....
So it seems. Yet woods are lonely.
And when I again awake,
I shall find their faces only
Moonbeams in the boughs that shake;
And their revels—but the rush
Of night-winds through bough and brush.
But my dreaming?—is it more
Than mere dreaming? Is a door
Opened in my soul? a curtain
Raised? to let me see for certain
I have lived that life before?
VINE AND SYCAMORE
I
Here where a tree and its wild liana,
Leaning over the streamlet, grow,
Once a nymph, like the moon'd Diana,
Sat in the ages long ago,
Sat with a mortal with whom she had mated,
Sat and smiled with a mortal youth,
Ere he of the forest, the god who hated,
Changed the two into forms uncouth....
II
Once in the woods she had heard a shepherd,
Heard a reed in a golden glade;
Followed, and clad in the skin of a leopard,
Found him fluting within the shade.
Found him sitting with bare brown shoulder,
Lithe and young as a sapling oak,
And leaning over a mossy boulder,
Love in her dryad heart awoke.
White she was as a dogwood flower,
Rosy white as a wild-crab bloom,
Fragrant white as a haw-tree bower
Full of sap and the May's perfume.
He who saw her above him burning,
Beautiful, naked, in dawn arrayed,
Deemed her Diana, and from her turning,
Leapt to his feet and fled afraid.
IV
Far she followed and called and pleaded,
Ever he fled with never a look;
Fled, till he came to this spot, deep-reeded,
Came to the bank of this forest brook.
Here for a moment he stopped and listened,
Heard in her voice her heart's despair,
Saw in her eyes the love that glistened,
Sank on her bosom and rested there.
V
Close to her beauty she strained and pressed him,
Held and bound him with kiss on kiss;
Soft with her hands and her lips caressed him,
Sweeter of touch than a blossom is.
Spoke to his heart, and with sweet persuasion
Mastered his soul till its fear was flown;
Smiled on his soul till its mortal evasion
Vanished, and body and soul were her own.
VI
Many a day had they met and mated,
Many a day by this wildwood brook,
When he of the forest, the god who hated,
Came on their love and changed with a look.
There on the shore, while they joyed and jested,
He in the shadows, unseen, espied
Her, like the goddess Diana breasted,
Him, like Endymion by her side.
VII
Lo! at a word, at a sign, their folded
Limbs and bodies assumed new form,
Hers to the shape of a tree were molded,
His to a vine with surrounding arm....
So they stand with their limbs enlacing,
Nymph and mortal, upon this shore,
He forever a vine embracing
Her, a silvery sycamore.
GENIUS LOCI
I
What wood-god, on this water's mossy curb,
Lost in reflections of Earth's loveliness,
Did I, just now, unconsciously disturb?
I who haphazard, wandering at a guess,
Came on this spot, wherein with gold and flame
Of buds and blooms the Season writes its name.—
Ah, me! could I have seen him ere alarm
Of my approach aroused him from his calm!
As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap,
Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warm
As a wood-rose, and filled the air with balm
Of his wild breath as with ethereal sap.
II
Does not the moss retain some slight impress,
Green-dented down, of where he lay or trod?
Do not the flowers, so reticent, confess
With conscious looks the contact of a god?
Does not the very water garrulously
Boast the indulgence of a deity?
And hark!—in burly beech and sycamore
How all the birds proclaim it! and the leaves
Rejoice with clappings of their myriad hands!
And shall not I believe, too, and adore,
With such wide proof?—Yea, though my soul perceives
No evident presence, still it understands.
III
And for a while it moves me to lie down
Here on the spot his god-head sanctified:
Mayhap some dream he dreamed may linger, brown
And young as joy, around the forest side:
Some dream within whose heart lives no disdain
For such as I whose love is sweet and sane;
That may repeat, so none but I may hear—
As one might tell a pearl-strung rosary—
Some epic that the leaves have learned to croon,
Some lyric whispered in the wildflower's ear,
Whose murmurous lines are sung by bird and bee,
And all the insects of the night and noon.
For, all around me, upon field and hill,
Enchantment lies as of mysterious flutes;
As if the music of a god's good-will
Had taken on material attributes
In blooms, like chords; and in the water-gleam,
That runs its silvery scales on every stream;
In sunbeam bars, up which the butterfly,
A golden note, vibrates then flutters on—
Inaudible tunes, blown on the pipes of Pan,
That have assumed a visible entity,
And drugged the air with beauty so, a Faun,
Behold, I seem, and am no more a man.