GARGAPHIE
“Succinctæ sacra Dianæ.”—
Ovid.
I
There the ragged sunlight lay
Tawny on thick ferns and gray
On dark waters: dimmer,
Lone and deep, the cypress grove
Bowered mystery and wove
Braided lights, like those that love
On the pearl plumes of a dove
Faint to gleam and glimmer.
II
There centennial pine and oak
Into stormy utterance broke:
Hollow rocks gloomed, slanting,
Echoing in dim arcade,
Looming with long moss, that made
Twilight streaks in tatters laid:
Where the wild hart, hunt-affrayed,
Plunged the water, panting.
III
Poppies of a sleepy gold
Mooned the gray-green darkness rolled
Down its vistas, making
Wisp-like blurs of flame. And pale
Stole the dim deer down the vale:
And the haunting nightingale
Sang unseen—the olden tale
All its hurt heart breaking.
IV
There the hazy serpolet,
Dewy cistus, blooming wet,
Blushed on bank and boulder:
There the cyclamen, as wan
As faint footsteps of the Dawn,
Carpeted the spotted lawn:
Where the nude nymph, dripping drawn,
Sloped a flower-white shoulder.
V
In the citrine shadow there
What tall presences and fair,
Godlike, lingered!—gracious
As the rock-rose there that grew:—
Delicate and dim as dew
Stepped from out the oaks, and drew
Faun-like forms to follow, who
Filled the forest spacious!
VI
Guarded that Bœotian
Valley so no foot of man
Soiled its silence holy
With profaning tread—save one,
The Hyantian: Actæon,
Who beheld but was undone
By Diana's wrath, that none,—
'Though with magic moly,—
VII
Might escape.—That valley sleeps
Lost to us: enchantment keeps
Sacred still its banished
Bowers that no man may see,
Fountains that her deity
Haunts, and every rock and tree
Where her hunt goes swinging free
As in ages vanished.
