Poems. Volume 1

THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

 
   Grey with all honours of age! but fresh-featured and ruddy
   As dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard Chaunticlere.
   Tender to tearfulness—childlike, and manly, and motherly;
Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet English ground.
 

THE POETRY OF SPENSER

 
   Lakes where the sunsheen is mystic with splendour and softness;
   Vales where sweet life is all Summer with golden romance:
   Forests that glimmer with twilight round revel-bright palaces;
Here in our May-blood we wander, careering ’mongst ladies and knights.
 

THE POETRY OF SHAKESPEARE

 
   Picture some Isle smiling green ’mid the white-foaming ocean;—
   Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays;
   Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above it;
Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm’d by one great human heart.
 

THE POETRY OF MILTON

 
   Like to some deep-chested organ whose grand inspiration,
   Serenely majestic in utterance, lofty and calm,
   Interprets to mortals with melody great as its burthen
The mystical harmonies chiming for ever throughout the bright spheres.
 

THE POETRY OF SOUTHEY

 
   Keen as an eagle whose flight towards the dim empyréan
   Fearless of toil or fatigue ever royally wends!
   Vast in the cloud-coloured robes of the balm-breathing Orient
Lo! the grand Epic advances, unfolding the humanest truth.
 

THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE

 
   A brook glancing under green leaves, self-delighting, exulting,
   And full of a gurgling melody ever renewed—
   Renewed thro’ all changes of Heaven, unceasing in sunlight,
Unceasing in moonlight, but hushed in the beams of the holier orb.
 

THE POETRY OF SHELLEY

 
   See’st thou a Skylark whose glistening winglets ascending
   Quiver like pulses beneath the melodious dawn?
   Deep in the heart-yearning distance of heaven it flutters—
Wisdom and beauty and love are the treasures it brings down at eve.
 

THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH

 
   A breath of the mountains, fresh born in the regions majestic,
   That look with their eye-daring summits deep into the sky.
   The voice of great Nature; sublime with her lofty conceptions,
Yet earnest and simple as any sweet child of the green lowly vale.
 

THE POETRY OF KEATS

 
   The song of a nightingale sent thro’ a slumbrous valley,
   Low-lidded with twilight, and tranced with the dolorous sound,
   Tranced with a tender enchantment; the yearning of passion
That wins immortality even while panting delirious with death.
 

VIOLETS

 
Violets, shy violets!
   How many hearts with you compare!
      Who hide themselves in thickest green,
            And thence, unseen,
   Ravish the enraptured air
   With sweetness, dewy fresh and rare!
 
 
Violets, shy violets!
   Human hearts to me shall be
      Viewless violets in the grass,
            And as I pass,
   Odours and sweet imagery
   Will wait on mine and gladden me!
 

ANGELIC LOVE

 
Angelic love that stoops with heavenly lips
   To meet its earthly mate;
Heroic love that to its sphere’s eclipse
   Can dare to join its fate
With one beloved devoted human heart,
And share with it the passion and the smart,
         The undying bliss
         Of its most fleeting kiss;
         The fading grace
         Of its most sweet embrace:—
   Angelic love, heroic love!
   Whose birth can only be above,
   Whose wandering must be on earth,
   Whose haven where it first had birth!
Love that can part with all but its own worth,
   And joy in every sacrifice
   That beautifies its Paradise!
And gently, like a golden-fruited vine,
With earnest tenderness itself consign,
And creeping up deliriously entwine
         Its dear delicious arms
               Round the beloved being!
         With fair unfolded charms,
               All-trusting, and all-seeing,—
Grape-laden with full bunches of young wine!
While to the panting heart’s dry yearning drouth
   Buds the rich dewy mouth—
         Tenderly uplifted,
         Like two rose-leaves drifted
Down in a long warm sigh of the sweet South!
         Such love, such love is thine,
         Such heart is mine,
O thou of mortal visions most divine!
 

TWILIGHT MUSIC

 
   Know you the low pervading breeze
               That softly sings
   In the trembling leaves of twilight trees,
As if the wind were dreaming on its wings?
   And have you marked their still degrees
   Of ebbing melody, like the strings
Of a silver harp swept by a spirit’s hand
      In some strange glimmering land,
               ’Mid gushing springs,
               And glistenings
Of waters and of planets, wild and grand!
   And have you marked in that still time
   The chariots of those shining cars
   Brighten upon the hushing dark,
               And bent to hark
That Voice, amid the poplar and the lime,
   Pause in the dilating lustre
               Of the spheral cluster;
   Pause but to renew its sweetness, deep
As dreams of heaven to souls that sleep!
   And felt, despite earth’s jarring wars,
               When day is done
               And dead the sun,
   Still a voice divine can sing,
   Still is there sympathy can bring
               A whisper from the stars!
Ah, with this sentience quickly will you know
How like a tree I tremble to the tones
               Of your sweet voice!
               How keenly I rejoice
   When in me with sweet motions slow
The spiritual music ebbs and moans—
Lives in the lustre of those heavenly eyes,
Dies in the light of its own paradise,—
Dies, and relives eternal from its death,
Immortal melodies in each deep breath;
Sweeps thro’ my being, bearing up to thee
Myself, the weight of its eternity;
Till, nerved to life from its ordeal fire,
It marries music with the human lyre,
Blending divine delight with loveliest desire.
 

REQUIEM

 
Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,
   Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;
Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream,
   In patience and peace thou art gone—to thy grave!
Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning,
   Dead tho’ a thousand hands stretch’d out to save.
 
 
Thou cam’st to us sighing, and singing and dying,
   How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert?
Placidly fading, and sinking and shading
   At last to that shadow, the latest desert;
Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining.
   Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!
 
 
The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens,
   The world and its voices, the sea and the sky,
The bloom of creation, the tie of relation,
   All—all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye;
The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten,
   Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.
 
 
The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless;
   And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth;
No last loving token of wedded love broken,
   No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth;
Lost as the flower that is drowned in the shower,
   Fall’n like a snowflake to melt in the earth.
 

THE FLOWER OF THE RUINS

 
   Take thy lute and sing
By the ruined castle walls,
Where the torrent-foam falls,
And long weeds wave:
   Take thy lute and sing,
O’er the grey ancestral grave!
   Daughter of a King,
      Tune thy string.
 
 
   Sing of happy hours,
In the roar of rushing time;
Till all the echoes chime
To the days gone by;
   Sing of passing hours
To the ever-present sky;—
   Weep—and let the showers
      Wake thy flowers.
 
 
   Sing of glories gone:—
No more the blazoned fold
From the banner is unrolled;
The gold sun is set.
   Sing his glory gone,
For thy voice may charm him yet;
   Daughter of the dawn,
      He is gone!
 
 
   Pour forth all thy grief!
Passionately sweep the chords,
Wed them quivering to thy words;
Wild words of wail!
   Shed thy withered grief—
But hold not Autumn to thy bale;
   The eddy of the leaf
      Must be brief!
 
 
   Sing up to the night:
Hard it is for streaming tears
To read the calmness of the spheres;
Coldly they shine;
   Sing up to their light;
They have views thou may’st divine—
   Gain prophetic sight
      From their light!
 
 
   On the windy hills
Lo, the little harebell leans
On the spire-grass that it queens,
With bonnet blue;
   Trusting love instils
Love and subject reverence true;
   Learn what love instils
      On the hills!
 
 
   By the bare wayside
Placid snowdrops hang their cheeks,
Softly touch’d with pale green streaks,
Soon, soon, to die;
   On the clothed hedgeside
Bands of rosy beauties vie,
   In their prophesied
      Summer pride.
 
 
   From the snowdrop learn;
Not in her pale life lives she,
But in her blushing prophecy.
Thus be thy hopes,
   Living but to yearn
Upwards to the hidden scopes;—
   Even within the urn
      Let them burn!
 
 
   Heroes of thy race—
Warriors with golden crowns,
Ghostly shapes with marbled frowns
Stare thee to stone;
   Matrons of thy race
Pass before thee making moan;
   Full of solemn grace
      Is their pace.
 
 
   Piteous their despair!
Piteous their looks forlorn!
Terrible their ghostly scorn!
Still hold thou fast;—
   Heed not their despair!—
Thou art thy future, not thy past;
   Let them glance and glare
      Thro’ the air.
 
 
   Thou the ruin’s bud,
Be not that moist rich-smelling weed
With its arras-sembled brede,
And ruin-haunting stalk;
   Thou the ruin’s bud,
Be still the rose that lights the walk,
   Mix thy fragrant blood
      With the flood!
 

THE RAPE OF AURORA

 
Never, O never,
   Since dewy sweet Flora
Was ravished by Zephyr,
   Was such a thing heard
            In the valleys so hollow!
   Till rosy Aurora,
Uprising as ever,
   Bright Phosphor to follow,
Pale Phoebe to sever,
   Was caught like a bird
            To the breast of Apollo!
 
 
Wildly she flutters,
   And flushes all over
With passionate mutters
   Of shame to the hush
            Of his amorous whispers:
   But O such a lover
Must win when he utters,
   Thro’ rosy red lispers,
The pains that discover
   The wishes that gush
            From the torches of Hesperus.
 
 
One finger just touching
   The Orient chamber,
Unflooded the gushing
   Of light that illumed
            All her lustrous unveiling.
   On clouds of glow amber,
Her limbs richly blushing,
   She lay sweetly wailing,
In odours that gloomed
   On the God as he bloomed
            O’er her loveliness paling.
 
 
Great Pan in his covert
   Beheld the rare glistening,
The cry of the love-hurt,
   The sigh and the kiss
            Of the latest close mingling;
   But love, thought he, listening,
Will not do a dove hurt,
   I know,—and a tingling,
Latent with bliss,
   Prickt thro’ him, I wis,
            For the Nymph he was singling.
 

SOUTH-WEST WIND IN THE WOODLAND

 
The silence of preluded song—
Æolian silence charms the woods;
Each tree a harp, whose foliaged strings
Are waiting for the master’s touch
To sweep them into storms of joy,
Stands mute and whispers not; the birds
Brood dumb in their foreboding nests,
Save here and there a chirp or tweet,
That utters fear or anxious love,
Or when the ouzel sends a swift
Half warble, shrinking back again
His golden bill, or when aloud
The storm-cock warns the dusking hills
And villages and valleys round:
For lo, beneath those ragged clouds
That skirt the opening west, a stream
Of yellow light and windy flame
Spreads lengthening southward, and the sky
Begins to gloom, and o’er the ground
A moan of coming blasts creeps low
And rustles in the crisping grass;
Till suddenly with mighty arms
Outspread, that reach the horizon round,
The great South-West drives o’er the earth,
And loosens all his roaring robes
Behind him, over heath and moor.
He comes upon the neck of night,
Like one that leaps a fiery steed
Whose keen black haunches quivering shine
With eagerness and haste, that needs
No spur to make the dark leagues fly!
Whose eyes are meteors of speed;
Whose mane is as a flashing foam;
Whose hoofs are travelling thunder-shocks;—
He comes, and while his growing gusts,
Wild couriers of his reckless course,
Are whistling from the daggered gorse,
And hurrying over fern and broom,
Midway, far off, he feigns to halt
And gather in his streaming train.
 
 
Now, whirring like an eagle’s wing
Preparing for a wide blue flight;
Now, flapping like a sail that tacks
And chides the wet bewildered mast;
Now, screaming like an anguish’d thing
Chased close by some down-breathing beak;
Now, wailing like a breaking heart,
That will not wholly break, but hopes
With hope that knows itself in vain;
Now, threatening like a storm-charged cloud;
Now, cooing like a woodland dove;
Now, up again in roar and wrath
High soaring and wide sweeping; now,
With sudden fury dashing down
Full-force on the awaiting woods.
 
 
Long waited there, for aspens frail
That tinkle with a silver bell,
To warn the Zephyr of their love,
When danger is at hand, and wake
The neighbouring boughs, surrendering all
Their prophet harmony of leaves,
Had caught his earliest windward thought,
And told it trembling; naked birk
Down showering her dishevelled hair,
And like a beauty yielding up
Her fate to all the elements,
Had swayed in answer; hazels close,
Thick brambles and dark brushwood tufts,
And briared brakes that line the dells
With shaggy beetling brows, had sung
Shrill music, while the tattered flaws
Tore over them, and now the whole
Tumultuous concords, seized at once
With savage inspiration,—pine,
And larch, and beech, and fir, and thorn,
And ash, and oak, and oakling, rave
And shriek, and shout, and whirl, and toss,
And stretch their arms, and split, and crack,
And bend their stems, and bow their heads,
And grind, and groan, and lion-like
Roar to the echo-peopled hills
And ravenous wilds, and crake-like cry
With harsh delight, and cave-like call
With hollow mouth, and harp-like thrill
With mighty melodies, sublime,
From clumps of column’d pines that wave
A lofty anthem to the sky,
Fit music for a prophet’s soul—
And like an ocean gathering power,
And murmuring deep, while down below
Reigns calm profound;—not trembling now
The aspens, but like freshening waves
That fall upon a shingly beach;—
And round the oak a solemn roll
Of organ harmony ascends,
And in the upper foliage sounds
A symphony of distant seas.
 
 
The voice of nature is abroad
This night; she fills the air with balm;
Her mystery is o’er the land;
And who that hears her now and yields
His being to her yearning tones,
And seats his soul upon her wings,
And broadens o’er the wind-swept world
With her, will gather in the flight
More knowledge of her secret, more
Delight in her beneficence,
Than hours of musing, or the lore
That lives with men could ever give!
Nor will it pass away when morn
Shall look upon the lulling leaves,
And woodland sunshine, Eden-sweet,
Dreams o’er the paths of peaceful shade;—
For every elemental power
Is kindred to our hearts, and once
Acknowledged, wedded, once embraced,
Once taken to the unfettered sense,
Once claspt into the naked life,
The union is eternal.
 

WILL O’ THE WISP

 
   Follow me, follow me,
Over brake and under tree,
Thro’ the bosky tanglery,
         Brushwood and bramble!
   Follow me, follow me,
         Laugh and leap and scramble!
   Follow, follow,
   Hill and hollow,
   Fosse and burrow,
   Fen and furrow,
Down into the bulrush beds,
’Midst the reeds and osier heads,
In the rushy soaking damps,
Where the vapours pitch their camps,
   Follow me, follow me,
         For a midnight ramble!
O! what a mighty fog,
What a merry night O ho!
Follow, follow, nigher, nigher—
Over bank, and pond, and briar,
Down into the croaking ditches,
   Rotten log,
   Spotted frog,
   Beetle bright
   With crawling light,
         What a joy O ho!
Deep into the purple bog—
         What a joy O ho!
Where like hosts of puckered witches
All the shivering agues sit
Warming hands and chafing feet,
By the blue marsh-hovering oils:
O the fools for all their moans!
Not a forest mad with fire
Could still their teeth, or warm their bones,
Or loose them from their chilly coils.
   What a clatter,
   How they chatter!
   Shrink and huddle,
   All a muddle!
         What a joy O ho!
Down we go, down we go,
         What a joy O ho!
Soon shall I be down below,
Plunging with a grey fat friar,
Hither, thither, to and fro,
Breathing mists and whisking lamps,
Plashing in the shiny swamps;
While my cousin Lantern Jack,
With cook ears and cunning eyes,
Turns him round upon his back,
Daubs him oozy green and black,
Sits upon his rolling size,
Where he lies, where he lies,
Groaning full of sack—
Staring with his great round eyes!
What a joy O ho!
Sits upon him in the swamps
Breathing mists and whisking lamps!
         What a joy O ho!
Such a lad is Lantern Jack,
         When he rides the black nightmare
Through the fens, and puts a glare
In the friar’s track.
Such a frolic lad, good lack!
To turn a friar on his back,
Trip him, clip him, whip him, nip him.
Lay him sprawling, smack!
Such a lad is Lantern Jack!
Such a tricksy lad, good lack!
         What a joy O ho!
   Follow me, follow me,
Where he sits, and you shall see!
 

SONG

 
Fair and false!  No dawn will greet
   Thy waking beauty as of old;
The little flower beneath thy feet
   Is alien to thy smile so cold;
The merry bird flown up to meet
Young morning from his nest i’ the wheat
   Scatters his joy to wood and wold,
   But scorns the arrogance of gold.
 
 
False and fair!  I scarce know why,
   But standing in the lonely air,
And underneath the blessed sky,
   I plead for thee in my despair;—
For thee cut off, both heart and eye
From living truth; thy spring quite dry;
   For thee, that heaven my thought may share,
   Forget—how false! and think—how fair!
 

SONG

 
Two wedded lovers watched the rising moon,
   That with her strange mysterious beauty glowing,
   Over misty hills and waters flowing,
Crowned the long twilight loveliness of June:
   And thus in me, and thus in me, they spake,
   The solemn secret of fist love did wake.
 
 
Above the hills the blushing orb arose;
   Her shape encircled by a radiant bower,
   In which the nightingale with charméd power
Poured forth enchantment o’er the dark repose:
   And thus in me, and thus in me, they said,
   Earth’s mists did with the sweet new spirit wed.
 
 
Far up the sky with ever purer beam,
   Upon the throne of night the moon was seated,
   And down the valley glens the shades retreated,
And silver light was on the open stream.
   And thus in me, and thus in me, they sighed,
   Aspiring Love has hallowed Passion’s tide.
 

SONG

 
I cannot lose thee for a day,
   But like a bird with restless wing
My heart will find thee far away,
   And on thy bosom fall and sing,
      My nest is here, my rest is here;—
   And in the lull of wind and rain,
   Fresh voices make a sweet refrain,
      ‘His rest is there, his nest is there.’
 
 
With thee the wind and sky are fair,
   But parted, both are strange and dark;
And treacherous the quiet air
   That holds me singing like a lark,
      O shield my love, strong arm above!
   Till in the hush of wind and rain,
   Fresh voices make a rich refrain,
      ‘The arm above will shield thy love.’
 

DAPHNE

 
Musing on the fate of Daphne,
Many feelings urged my breast,
For the God so keen desiring,
And the Nymph so deep distrest.
 
 
Never flashed thro’ sylvan valley
Visions so divinely fair!
He with early ardour glowing,
She with rosy anguish rare.
 
 
Only still more sweet and lovely
For those terrors on her brows,
Those swift glances wild and brilliant,
Those delicious panting vows.
 
 
Timidly the timid shoulders
Shrinking from the fervid hand!
Dark the tide of hair back-flowing
From the blue-veined temples bland!
 
 
Lovely, too, divine Apollo
In the speed of his pursuit;
With his eye an azure lustre,
And his voice a summer lute!
 
 
Looking like some burnished eagle
Hovering o’er a fluttered bird;
Not unseen of silver Naiad,
And of wistful Dryad heard!
 
 
Many a morn the naked beauty
Saw her bright reflection drown
In the flowing smooth-faced river,
While the god came sheening down.
 
 
Down from Pindus bright Peneus
Tells its muse-melodious source;
Sacred is its fountained birthplace,
And the Orient floods its course.
 
 
Many a morn the sunny darling
Saw the rising chariot-rays,
From the winding river-reaches,
Mellowing in amber haze.
 
 
Thro’ the flaming mountain gorges
Lo, the River leaps the plain;
Like a wild god-stridden courser,
Tossing high its foamy mane.
 
 
Then he swims thro’ laurelled sunlight,
Full of all sensations sweet,
Misty with his morning incense,
To the mirrored maiden’s feet!
 
 
Wet and bright the dinting pebbles
Shine where oft she paused and stood;
All her dreamy warmth revolving,
While the chilly waters wooed.
 
 
Like to rosy-born Aurora,
Glowing freshly into view,
When her doubtful foot she ventures
On the first cold morning blue.
 
 
White as that Thessalian lily,
Fairest Tempe’s fairest flower,
Lo, the tall Peneïan virgin
Stands beneath her bathing bower.
 
 
There the laurell’d wreaths o’erarching
Crown’d the dainty shuddering maid;
There the dark prophetic laurel
Kiss’d her with its sister shade.
 
 
There the young green glistening leaflets
Hush’d with love their breezy peal;
There the little opening flowerets
Blush’d beneath her vermeil heel!
 
 
There among the conscious arbours
Sounds of soft tumultuous wail,
Mysteries of love, melodious,
Came upon the lyric gale!
 
 
Breathings of a deep enchantment,
Effluence of immortal grace,
Flitted round her faltering footstep,
Spread a balm about her face!
 
 
Witless of the enamour’d presence,
Like a dreamy lotus bud
From its drowsy stem down-drooping,
Gazed she in the glowing flood.
 
 
Softly sweet with fluttering presage,
Felt she that ethereal sense,
Drinking charms of love delirious,
Reaping bliss of love intense!
 
 
All the air was thrill’d with sunrise,
Birds made music of her name,
And the god-impregnate water
Claspt her image ere she came.
 
 
Richer for that glance unconscious!
Dearer for that soft dismay!
And the sudden self-possession!
And the smile as bright as day!
 
 
Plunging ’mid her scattered tresses,
With her blue invoking eyes;
See her like a star descending!
Like a rosebud see her rise!
 
 
Like a rosebud in the morning
Dashing off its jewell’d dews,
Ere unfolding all its fragrance
It is gathered by the muse!
 
 
Beauteous in the foamy laughter
Bubbling round her shrinking waist,
Lo! from locks and lips and eyelids
Rain the glittering pearl-drops chaste!
 
 
And about the maiden rapture
Still the ruddy ripples play’d,
Ebbing round in startled circlets
When her arms began to wade;
 
 
Flowing in like tides attracted
To the glowing crescent shine!
Clasping her ambrosial whiteness
Like an Autumn-tinted vine!
 
 
Sinking low with love’s emotion!
Levying with look and tone
All love’s rosy arts to mimic
Cytherea’s magic zone!
 
 
Trembling up with adoration
To the crimson daisy tip
Budding from the snowy bosom—
Fainter than the rose-red lip!
 
 
Rising in a storm of wavelets,
That for shelter, feigning fright,
Prest to those twin-heaving havens,
Harbour’d there beneath her light;
 
 
Gleaming in a whirl of eddies
Round her lucid throat and neck;
Eddying in a gleam of dimples
Up against her bloomy cheek;
 
 
Bribing all the breezy water
With rich warmth, the nymph to keep
In a self-imprison’d plaisance,
Tempting her from deep to deep.
 
 
Till at last delirious passion
Thrill’d the god to wild excess,
And the fervour of a moment
Made divinity confess;
 
 
And he stood in all his glory!
But so radiant, being near,
That her eyes were frozen on him
In a fascinated fear!
 
 
All with orient splendour shining,
All with roseate birth aglow,
Gleam’d the golden god before her,
With his golden crescent bow.
 
 
Soon the dazzled light subsided,
And he seem’d a beauteous youth,
Form’d to gain the maiden’s murmurs,
And to pledge the vows of truth.
 
 
Ah! that thus he had continued!
O, that such for her had been!
Graceful with all godlike beauty,
But so humanly serene!
 
 
Cheeks, and mouth, and mellow ringlets,
Bounteous as the mid-day beam;
Pleading looks and wistful tremour,
Tender as a maiden’s dream!
 
 
Palms that like a bird’s throbb’d bosom
Palpitate with eagerness,
Lips, the bridals of the roses,
Dewy sweet from the caress!
 
 
Lips and limbs, and eyes and ringlets,
Swaying, praying to one prayer,
Like a lyre, swept by a spirit,
In the still, enraptur’d air.
 
 
Like a lyre in some far valley,
Uttering ravishments divine!
All its strings to viewless fingers
Yearning, modulations fine!
 
 
Yearning with melodious fervour!
Like a beauteous maiden flower,
When the young beloved three paces
Hovers from the bridal bower.
 
 
Throbbing thro’ the dawning stillness!
As a heart within a breast,
When the young beloved is stepping
Radiant to the nuptial nest.
 
 
O for Daphne! gentle Daphne
Ever warmer by degrees
Whispers full of hopes and visions
Throng her ears like honey bees!
 
 
Never yet was lonely blossom
Woo’d with such delicious voice!
Never since hath mortal maiden
Dwelt on such celestial choice!
 
 
Love-suffused she quivers, falters—
Falters, sighs, but never speaks,
All her rosy blood up-gushing
Overflows her ripe young cheeks.
 
 
Blushing, sweet with virgin blushes,
All her loveliness a-flame,
Stands she in the orient waters,
Stricken o’er with speechless shame!
 
 
Ah! but lovelier, ever lovelier,
As more deep the colour glows,
And the honey-laden lily
Changes to the fragrant rose.
 
 
While the god with meek embraces,
Whispering all his sacred charms,
Softly folds her, gently holds her,
In his white encircling arms!
 
 
But, O Dian! veil not wholly
Thy pale crescent from the morn!
Vanish not, O virgin goddess,
With that look of pallid scorn!
 
 
Still thy pure protecting influence
Shed from those fair watchful eyes!—
Lo! her angry orb has vanished,
And the bright sun thrones the skies!
 
 
Voicelessly the forest Virgin
Vanished! but one look she gave—
Keen as Niobean arrow
Thro’ the maiden’s heart it drave.
 
 
Thus toward that throning bosom
Where all earth is warmed,—each spot
Nourished with autumnal blessings—
Icy chill was Daphne caught.
 
 
Icy chill! but swift revulsion
All her gentler self renewed,
Even as icy Winter quickens
With bud-opening warmth imbued.
 
 
Even as a torpid brooklet,
That to the night-gleaming moon
Flashed in turn the frozen glances,
Melts upon the breast of noon.
 
 
But no more—O never, never,
Turns she to that bosom bright,
Swiftly all her senses counsel,
All her nerves are strung to flight.
 
 
O’er the brows of radiant Pindus
Rolls a shadow dark and cold,
And a sound of lamentation
Issues from its mournful fold.
 
 
Voice of the far-sighted Muses!
Cry of keen foreboding song!
Every cleft of startled Tempe
Tingles with it sharp and long.
 
 
Over bourn and bosk and dingle,
Over rivers, over rills,
Runs the sad subservient Echo
Toward the dim blue distant hills!
 
 
And another and another!
’Tis a cry more wild than all;
And the hills with muffled voices
Answer ‘Daphne!’ to the call.
 
 
And another and another!
’Tis a cry so wildly sweet,
That her charmed heart turns rebel
To the instinct of her feet;
 
 
And she pauses for an instant;
But his arms have scarcely slid
Round her waist in cestian girdles,
And his low voluptuous lid
 
 
Lifted pleading, and the honey
Of his mouth for hers athirst,
Ruby glistening, raised for moisture—
Like a bud that waits to burst
 
 
In the sweet espousing showers—
And his tongue has scarce begun
With its inarticulate burthen,
And the clouds scarce show the sun
 
 
As it pierces thro’ a crevice
Of the mass that closed it o’er,
When again the horror flashes—
And she turns to flight once more!
 
 
And again o’er radiant Pindus
Rolls the shadow dark and cold,
And the sound of lamentation
Issues from its sable fold!
 
 
And again the light winds chide her
As she darts from his embrace—
And again the far-voiced echoes
Speak their tidings of the chase.
 
 
Loudly now as swiftly, swiftly,
O’er the glimmering sands she speeds;
Wildly now as in the furzes
From the piercing spikes she bleeds.
 
 
Deeply and with direful anguish,
As above each crimson drop
Passion checks the god Apollo,
And love bids him weep and stop.—
 
 
He above each drop of crimson
Shadowing—like the laurel leaf
That above himself will shadow—
Sheds a fadeless look of grief.
 
 
Then with love’s remorseful discord,
With its own desire at war,
Sighing turns, while dimly fleeting
Daphne flies the chase afar.
 
 
But all nature is against her!
Pan, with all his sylvan troop,
Thro’ the vista’d woodland valleys
Blocks her course with cry and whoop!
 
 
In the twilights of the thickets
Trees bend down their gnarled boughs,
Wild green leaves and low curved branches
Hold her hair and beat her brows.
 
 
Many a brake of brushwood covert,
Where cold darkness slumbers mute,
Slips a shrub to thwart her passage,
Slides a hand to clutch her foot.
 
 
Glens and glades of lushest verdure
Toil her in their tawny mesh,
Wilder-woofed ways and alleys
Lock her struggling limbs in leash.
 
 
Feathery grasses, flowery mosses,
Knot themselves to make her trip;
Sprays and stubborn sprigs outstretching
Put a bridle on her lip;
 
 
Many a winding lane betrays her,
Many a sudden bosky shoot,
And her knee makes many a stumble
O’er some hidden damp old root,
 
 
Whose quaint face peers green and dusky
’Mongst the matted growth of plants,
While she rises wild and weltering,
Speeding on with many pants.
 
 
Tangles of the wild red strawberry
Spread their freckled trammels frail;
In the pathway creeping brambles
Catch her in their thorny trail.
 
 
All the widely sweeping greensward
Shifts and swims from knoll to knoll;
Grey rough-fingered oak and elm wood
Push her by from bole to bole.
 
 
Groves of lemon, groves of citron,
Tall high-foliaged plane and palm,
Bloomy myrtle, light-blue olive,
Wave her back with gusts of balm.
 
 
Languid jasmine, scrambling briony,
Walls of close-festooning braid,
Fling themselves about her, mingling
With her wafted looks, waylaid.
 
 
Twisting bindweed, honey’d woodbine,
Cling to her, while, red and blue,
On her rounded form ripe berries
Dash and die in gory dew.
 
 
Running ivies dark and lingering
Round her light limbs drag and twine;
Round her waist with languorous tendrils
Reels and wreathes the juicy vine;
 
 
Reining in the flying creature
With its arms about her mouth;
Bursting all its mellowing bunches
To seduce her husky drouth;
 
 
Crowning her with amorous clusters;
Pouring down her sloping back
Fresh-born wines in glittering rillets,
Following her in crimson track.
 
 
Buried, drenched in dewy foliage,
Thus she glimmers from the dawn,
Watched by every forest creature,
Fleet-foot Oread, frolic Faun.
 
 
Silver-sandalled Arethusa
Not more swiftly fled the sands,
Fled the plains and fled the sunlights,
Fled the murmuring ocean strands.
 
 
O, that now the earth would open!
O, that now the shades would hide!
O, that now the gods would shelter!
Caverns lead and seas divide!
 
 
Not more faint soft-lowing Io
Panted in those starry eyes,
When the sleepless midnight meadows
Piteously implored the skies!
 
 
Still her breathless flight she urges
By the sanctuary stream,
And the god with golden swiftness
Follows like an eastern beam.
 
 
Her the close bewildering greenery
Darkens with its duskiest green,—
Him each little leaflet welcomes,
Flushing with an orient sheen.
 
 
Thus he nears, and now all Tempe
Rings with his melodious cry,
Avenues and blue expanses
Beam in his large lustrous eye!
 
 
All the branches start to music!
As if from a secret spring
Thousands of sweet bills are bubbling
In the nest and on the wing.
 
 
Gleams and shines the glassy river
And rich valleys every one;
But of all the throbbing beauty
Brightest! singled by the sun!
 
 
Ivy round her glimmering ancle,
Vine about her glowing brow,
Never sure was bride so beauteous,
Daphne, chosen nymph, as thou!
 
 
Thus he nears! and now she feels him
Breathing hot on every limb;
And he hears her own quick pantings—
Ah! that they might be for him.
 
 
O, that like the flower he tramples,
Bending from his golden tread,
Full of fair celestial ardours,
She would bow her bridal head.
 
 
O, that like the flower she presses,
Nodding from her lily touch,
Light as in the harmless breezes,
She would know the god for such!
 
 
See! the golden arms are round her—
To the air she grasps and clings!
See! his glowing arms have wound her—
To the sky she shrieks and springs!
 
 
See! the flushing chace of Tempe
Trembles with Olympian air—
See! green sprigs and buds are shooting
From those white raised arms of prayer!
 
 
In the earth her feet are rooting!—
Breasts and limbs and lifted eyes,
Hair and lips and stretching fingers,
Fade away—and fadeless rise.
 
 
And the god whose fervent rapture
Clasps her finds his close embrace
Full of palpitating branches,
And new leaves that bud apace,
 
 
Bound his wonder-stricken forehead;—
While in ebbing measures slow
Sounds of softly dying pulses
Pause and quiver, pause and go;
 
 
Go, and come again, and flutter
On the verge of life,—then flee!
All the white ambrosial beauty
Is a lustrous Laurel Tree!
 
 
Still with the great panting love-chase
All its running sap is warmed;—
But from head to foot the virgin
Is transfigured and transformed.
 
 
Changed!—yet the green Dryad nature
Is instinct with human ties,
And above its anguish’d lover
Breathes pathetic sympathies;
 
 
Sympathies of love and sorrow;
Joy in her divine escape;
Breathing through her bursting foliage
Comfort to his bending shape.
 
 
Vainly now the floating Naiads
Seek to pierce the laurel maze,
Nought but laurel meets their glances,
Laurel glistens as they gaze.
 
 
Nought but bright prophetic laurel!
Laurel over eyes and brows,
Over limbs and over bosom,
Laurel leaves and laurel boughs!
 
 
And in vain the listening Dryad
Shells her hand against her ear!—
All is silence—save the echo
Travelling in the distance drear.