LOVELINESS
I
Now let us forth to find the young witch Spring,
Seated amid her bow'rs and birds and buds,
Busy with loveliness.—And, wandering
Among old forests that the sunlight floods,
Or vales of hermit-holy solitudes,
Dryads shall beckon us from where they cling,
Their limbs an oak-bark brown; their hair—wild woods
Have perfumed—wreathed with earliest leaves: and they,
Regarding us with a dew-sparkling eye,
Shall whispering greet us, as the rain the rye,
Or from wild lips melodious welcome fling,
Like hidden waterfalls with winds at play.
II
Let us surprise the Naiad ere she slips—
Nude at her toilette—in her fountain's glass;
With damp locks dewy and evasive hips,
Cool-dripping, but an instant seen, alas!
When from indented moss and plushy grass—
Fear in her great eyes' rainbow-blue—she dips,
Irised, the cloven water; as we pass
Making a rippled circle that shall hide,
From our exploring eyes, what watery path
She gleaming took; what crystal haunt she hath
In minnowy freshness, where her murmurous lips,
Bubbling, make merry 'neath the rocky tide.
III
Then we may meet the Oread, whose eyes
Are dewdrops where twin heavens shine confessed:
She, all the maiden modesty's surprise
Rosying her temples,—to slim loins and breast
Tempestuous, brown, bewildering tresses pressed,—
Shall stand a moment's moiety in wise
Of some delicious dream, then shrink, distressed,
Like some wild mist that, hardly seen, is gone,
Footing the ferny hillside without sound;
Or, like storm sunlight, her white limbs shall bound,
A thistle's instant, towards a woody rise,
A flying glimmer o'er the dew-drenched lawn.
IV
And we may see the Satyrs in the shades
Of drowsy dells pipe, and, goat-footed, dance;
And Pan himself reel rollicking through the glades;
Or, hidden in bosky bow'rs, the Lust, perchance,
Faun-like, that waits with heated, animal glance
The advent of the Loveliness that wades
Thigh-deep through flowers, naked as Romance,
All unsuspecting, till two hairy arms
Clasp her rebellious beauty, panting white,
Whose tearful terror, struggling into might,
Beats the brute brow resisting, but evades
Not him, for whom the gods designed her charms.
