But, know, a nymph with merry eyes Meets mine within its laughing skies; A graceful, naked nymph who plays All the long fragrant summer days With instant sight of bees and birds, And speaks with them in water-words.

One for whose nakedness the air Weaves moony mists, and on whose hair, Unfilleted, the night will set That lone star as a coronet.

LILLITA.

Can I forget how, when you stood 'Mid orchards whence spring bloom had fled, Stars made the orchards seem a-bud, And weighed the sighing boughs o'erhead With shining ghosts of blossoms dead!

Or when you bowed, a lily tall, Above your August lilies slim, Transparent pale, that by the wall Like softest moonlight seemed to swim, Brimmed with faint fragrance to the brim.

And in the cloud that lingered low-- A silent pallor in the West-- There stirred and beat a golden glow Of some great heart that could not rest, A heart of gold within its breast.

Your heart, your life was in the wild, Your joy to hear the whip-poor-will Lament its love, when wafted mild The harvest drifted from the hill: The deep, deep wildwood where had trod The red deer o'er the fallen hush Of Fall's torn leaves, when the low tod Was frosty 'neath each berried bush.

At dusk the whip-will still complains Above your lolling lilies, where Their faces white the moonlight stains, The dreamy stream flows far and fair Whisp'ring of rest an easeful air ...

O music of the falling rain, At night unto her painless rest Sound sweet and sad, then is she fain To see the wild flowers on her breast Lift moist, pure faces up again To breathe to G.o.d their fragrance blest.

Thick-pleated beeches long have crossed Old, mighty arms above her tomb Where oft I watch at night her ghost Bow to the wild-flower's full-blown bloom A mist of curls, where Summer lost Her tangled sunbeams and perfume.

ARTEMIS.

Oft of the hiding Oread wast thou seen At earliest morn, a tall imperial shape, High-buskined, dew-dripped, and on close, chaste curls, Long blackness of thick hair, the tipsy drops Caught from the dipping sprays of under bosks, Kissed of thy cheek and of thy shoulder brushed, Thy rosy cheek as haughty Hera's fair, Thy snow-soft shoulder luminous as light.

Oft did the s.h.a.ggy hills and solitudes Of Arethusa shout and ring and reel, Reverberate and echo merrily With the mad chiding of thy merry hounds, Big mouthed and musical, that on the stag, Or bristling wild-boar furious grew in quest, And thou, as keen, fleet-footed and clean-limbed, Thou, thou, O G.o.ddess, with thy quivered crew, Most loveliest maids and fit to wed with G.o.ds, Rushed, swinging on the wind free limbs and lithe, Long as thy radiant locks flung free to blow And lighten in the wine-sharp air of morn.

Ai me! their throats, their l.u.s.ty, dimpled throats, That made the hills sing and the wood-ways dance As if to Orphic strains, and gave them life!

Ai me! their bosoms' deepness and the soft, Sweet, happy beauty of their delicate limbs, That stormed the forest vacancies with light, Swift daylight of their splendor and made blow, Within the glad sonorous solitudes, Old germs of flowerets a century cold.

The woodland Naiad whispered by her rock; The Hamadryad, limpid-eyed and wild, Expectant rustled by her usual oak, And laughed in wonder; and mad Pan himself Reeled piping fiercely down the dingled deeps With rollicking eye that rolled a brutish l.u.s.t.

And did the unwed maiden, musing where Her father's well, beyond the G.o.d-graced hills Bubbled and babbled, hear the full, high cry Of the chaste huntress, while her dripping jar Unheeded brimmed, vowed with her chast.i.ty, And shorn gold hair to veil her virgin feet.

But, ah! not when the saucy daylight swims, Filling the forests with a glamorous green, Let me behold thee, G.o.ddess! but, when dim The slow night settles on the haunted wild, And walks in sober sark, and heatful stars Shine out intensely and the echoy waste Far off, far off, in shudders palpitates Unto the Limnad's song unmerciful, Unmerciful and mad and bitter sweet!

Then come in all thy G.o.dhead, beautiful!

Thou beautiful and gentle, as thou cam'st To lorn Endymion, who, in Lemnos once, Lone in the wizard magic of the wild, Wandered a gentle boy, unfriended, sad.

It grew far off adown the stirring trees, Thy silent beauty blossoming flowerlike, Between the tree trunks and the lacing limbs, Bright in the leaves that kissed for very joy And drunkenness of glory thus revealed.

He saw it all, the naked brow and limbs, The polished silver of thy glossy breast, Alone, uncompanied of handmaidens; Like some full, splendid fruit Hesperian Not e'en for deities; thy sweet far voice Came tinkling on his wistful ear and lisped Like leaves that cling and slip to cling again.

And on such perilous beauty that must kill, The poisonous favor of thy G.o.dliness, Feasting his every sense through eyes and ears, His soul exalted waxed and amorous,-- Like the high G.o.ds who quaff deep golden bowls Of rosy nectar,--with immortal love,-- And what remained, ah, what remained but death!

IN NOVEMBER.

No windy white of wind-blown clouds is thine, No windy white but low and sodden gray, That holds the melancholy skies and kills The wild song and the wild bird; yet, ai me!

Thy melancholy skies and mournful woods, Brown, sighing forests dying that I love!

Thy long thick leaves deep, deep about my feet, Slow, weary feet that halt or falter on; Thy long, sweet, reddened leaves that burn and die With silent fever of the sickened wold.

I love to hear in all thy windy coigns, Rain-wet and choked with bleached and rotting weeds, The baby-babble of the many leaves, That, fallen on barren ways, like fallen hopes Once held so high on all the Summer's heart Of strong majestic trees, now come to such, Would fainly gossip in hushed undertones,-- Sad weak yet sweet as natures that have known True tears and hot in bleak remorseless days,-- Of all their whilom glory vanished so.

A CHARACTER.

He lived beyond us and we stood As pygmies to his every mood, Mere pupils at his beck and nod, That spoke the influence of a G.o.d.

And oft we wondered, when his thought Made our humanity seem naught, If he, like Uther's mystic son, Were not a birth for Avalon.

When wand'ring 'neath the sighing trees, His soul waxed genial with the breeze, That, voiceful, from the piney glades Companioned seemed of Oreads; A Dryad life lived in each oak, And with its many leaf-tongues spoke, Glorying the deity whose power Gave it its life in sun and shower.

By every violet-hallowed brook, Where every bramble-matted nook Rippled and laughed with water-sounds, He walked as one on sainted grounds, Fearing intrusion on the spell That kept some fountain-spirit's well, Or woodland genius sitting where Brown racy berries kissed his hair.

And when the wind far o'er the hill Had fall'n and left the wildwood still As moonlight jets on quiet moss,-- Beneath the pied boughs arched across Long limpid vistas, brimmed with ripe Green-swimming sunbeams, heard the pipe Of some hid follower of Pan And worshiper, half brute half man; Who, hairy-haunched, a savage rhyme Puffed in his reed to rudest time; With swollen jowl and rolling eye Danced boisterous where the silver sky Smiled in the forest's broken roof; The strident branch beneath his hoof Snapped on the sod which, interfused Between black roots, was crushed and bruised.

And often when he wandered through Old forests at the fall of dew,-- A lone Endymion who sought A higher beauty yet uncaught,-- Some night, we thought, most surely he Were favored of her deity, And in the holy solitude Her sudden presence, long pursued, Unto his eyes would be confessed; The awful moonlight of her breast Come high with majesty and hold His heart's blood till his heart were cold, Unpulsed, unsinewed, all undone, And s.n.a.t.c.h his soul to Avalon.

A MOOD.

Bowed hearts that hold the saddest memories Are the most beautiful; and such make sweet Light happy moods of alien natures which Their sadness contacts, and so sanctifies.

And such to me is an old, gabled house, Deserted and neglected and unknown Within the dreamy hollow of its hills, Dark, cedared hills and fruitless orchards sear; With but its host of shrouded memories Haunting its low and desolate rooms and halls, Its roomy hearths and cob-webbed crevices.

Here in dim rainy noons I love to sit, And hear the running rain along the roof, The creak and crack of noises that are born Of unseen and mysterious agencies; The dripping footfalls of the wind adown Lone winding stairways ma.s.sy-banistered; A clapping door and then a sudden hush That brings a pleasant terror stiffening through The tingling veins and staring from the eyes.

Then comes the running rain along the roof's Rain-rotten gables and on rain-stained walls Invokes vague images and memories Of all its sometime lords and mistresses, Until the stale material will a.s.sume All that's clairvoyant, and the fine-strung ear In quaint far rooms or dusty corridors Hear wrinkled ladies all beruffled trail Long haughty silks "miraculously stiff."

A THOUGHT.

And I have thought of youth which strains Nearer its G.o.d to rise,-- What were ambition and its pains Were life a cowardice!

The grander souls that rose above Thought's n.o.blest heights to tread, Found their endeavor in their love, And truth behind the dead.

A secret glory in the tomb, A night that dawns in light, An intense presence veiled with gloom, And not an endless night....

Nepenthe of this struggling world, Thou who dost stay mad Care When her fury's scourge above is curled And we see her writhing hair!