Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses. Cawein Madison Julius

      There is no rhyme that is half so sweet

      As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;

      There is no metre that's half so fine

      As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;

      And the loveliest lyric I ever heard

      Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.—

      If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach

      My heart their beautiful parts of speech.

      And the natural art that they say these with,

      My soul would sing of beauty and myth

      In a rhyme and a metre that none before

      Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore,

      And the world would be richer one poet the more.

      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 cling

      The loamy odors of old solitudes,

      Who, from her beechen doorway, calls; and leads

      My soul to follow; now with dimpling words

      Of 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?

      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 dips

      The shivered waters, wrinkling where I pass;

      But, in the liquid light, where she doth hide,

      I have beheld the azure of her gaze

      Smiling; and, where the orbing ripple plays,

      Among her minnows I have heard her lips,

      Bubbling, make merry by the waterside.

      Or now it is an Oread—whose eyes

      Are 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 distressed

      Stands 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 sound

      Of 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?

      Now't is a Satyr piping serenades

      On a slim reed. Now Pan and Faun advance

      Beneath green-hollowed roofs of forest glades,

      Their feet gone mad with music: now, perchance,

      Sylvanus sleeping, on whose leafy trance

      The Nymphs stand gazing in dim ambuscades

      Of sun-embodied perfume.—Myth, Romance,

      Where'er I turn, reach out bewildering arms,

      Compelling me to follow. Day and night

      I hear their voices and behold the light

      Of their divinity that still evades,

      And still allures me in a thousand forms.

      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 wildwood rose, and filled the air with balm

      Of his sweet breath as with ethereal sap.

      Does not the moss retain some vague impress,

      Green dented in, of where he lay or trod?

      Do not the flow'rs, 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.

      And for a while it moves me to lie down

      Here on the spot his god-head sanctified:

      Mayhap some dream he dreamed may lingert brown

      And young as joy, around the forestside;

      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 trees have learned to croon,

      Some lyric whispered in the wild-flower'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 from stream to 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