Excerpt
Romance I When I go forth to greet the glad-faced Spring,Just at the time of opening apple-buds,When brooks are laughing, winds are whispering,On babbling hillsides or in warbling woods,There is an unseen presence that eludes:—Perhaps a Dryad, in whose tresses clingThe loamy odors of old solitudes,Who, from her beechen doorway, calls; and leadsMy soul to follow; now with dimpling wordsOf leaves; and now with syllables of birds;While here and there—is it her limbs that swing?Or restless sunlight on the moss and weeds? II Or, haply, 't is a Naiad now who slips,Like some white lily, from her fountain's glass,While from her dripping hair and breasts and hips,The moisture rains cool music on the grass.Her have I heard and followed, yet, alas!Have seen no more than the wet ray that dipsThe shivered waters, wrinkling where I pass;But, in the liquid light, where she doth hide,I have beheld the azure of her gazeSmiling; and, where the orbing ripple plays,Among her minnows I have heard her lips,Bubbling, make merry by the waterside. III Or now it is an Oread—whose eyesAre constellated dusk—who stands confessed,As naked as a flow'r; her heart's surprise,Like morning's rose, mantling her brow and breast:She, shrinking from my presence, all distressedStands for a startled moment ere she flies,Her deep hair blowing, up the mountain crest,Wild as a mist that trails along the dawn.And is't her footfalls lure me? or the soundOf airs that stir the crisp leaf on the ground?And is't her body glimmers on yon rise?Or dog-wood blossoms snowing on the lawn? IV Now't is a Satyr piping serenadesOn a slim reed. Now Pan and Faun advanceBeneath green-hollowed roofs of forest glades,Their feet gone mad with music: now, perchance,Sylvanus sleeping, on whose leafy tranceThe Nymphs stand gazing in dim ambuscadesOf sun-embodied perfume.—Myth, Romance,Where'er I turn, reach out bewildering arms,Compelling me to follow. Day and nightI hear their voices and behold the lightOf their divinity that still evades,And still allures me in a thousand forms. GeniusLoci 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 flameOf buds and blooms, the season writes its name.—Ah, me! could I have seen him ere alarmOf my approach aroused him from his calm!As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap,Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warmAs wildwood rose, and filled the air with balmOf his sweet breath as with ethereal sap. II Does not the moss retain some vague impress,Green dented in, of where he lay or trod?Do not the flow'rs, so reticent, confessWith conscious looks the contact of a god?Does not the very water garrulouslyBoast the indulgence of a deity?And, hark! in burly beech and sycamoreHow all the birds proclaim it!...