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 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.

III

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?

IV

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.

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 wildwood rose, and filled the air with balm
  Of 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, 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.