University of Virginia Library

The floating Moon went down the tract of night;
The rosiness of sunset yellowed down
Into a lighted argent at the roots
Of the soft clouds that bore her. All day long
In devious forest, grove, and fountain side
The God had sought his Daphne. The sweet light
Had left him in his searching, but desire
Immortal held all slumber from his brain,
And drave him like a restless dream among
The pale and sylvan valleys. Here each branch
Swayed with a glitter all its crowded leaves,
And brushed the soft divine hair touching them
In ruffled clusters, as Apollo strode
Among the foliage.

Suddenly the Moon
Smoothed herself out of vapour-drift, and made
The deep night full of pleasure in the eye
Of her sweet motion. Not alone she came
Leading the starlight with her like a song;
And not a bud of all that undergrowth
But crisped, and tingled out an ardent edge
As the light steeped it; over whose massed leaves
The portals of illimitable sleep
Faded in heaven. The chambers of the dawn
Lay lordless yet, and, till the prime beam, grey.
As some cloud-vapour caught among the pines,
Alone in dim white shadow Phœbus went
To seek her: only on his lip and brows
Descended glory; otherwise the God,
His noble limbs marbled in moonlight, came,
While on the crag-face infinite blue pines
Crowded the vales, and, seeming in the mist
Themselves as vapour, faded tier on tier.
And, as he wandered, from the lips divine
Came this complaining of the love-lorn God:—
“Beautiful Daphne, eagle bird of the hills;
O lovely Daphne, sleek and slender fawn;
The wild bee hides her store among the rocks,
Thou hidest up thy beauty in these hills;
Why in the wasting of the mountain side
Dost thou delight, my darling, still to cower
Behind grey boulders? As the slender fern
Draws in its feathery tresses underneath
Some fountain slab, and trembles half the day
At each vale whisper. O my little neat
And twinkling mountain lizard, rustling in
Between the shadows, nestling a bright side;
A moment shining out into the light,
Gone like a flash. My silent dove of the woods,
Thou fearest lest thy song reveal thy nest.
Thou tremblest as a dewdrop at my tread.
Is my glance deadly, and my love unkind?
That thou wilt never set thy fugitive cheek
Against my lips an instant, till my breath
Revive thee; till thy timid eyes look up
And smile unwilling love to my desire.
There is not any fear in loving ways;
Be comforted, thou restless little one.
Let me approach thee, and thy life shall find
Its music; and a sudden land of flowers
Shall lift itself around thee, fleecy-deep,
And veiling heaven out in exuberant
Curtains of bloom.”

“Divine one, thy child days
Are gone, their pretty echoes broken all;
More is the music of the hours that grow,
Clothed with sweet sound and mellow chords of fire;
The lyric words are older than the gods,
Coeval with the fruitful patient earth,
Mother of many children. O my nymph,
I dwelt alone in glory, crowned with light;
For thee I have forgot my radiant throne.
The cloudy plains are weary to my feet,
The nectar cup is bitter to my mouth;
A god, I languish, broken with desire,
A king, I pine, bound of a mightier one.
Veiling my golden brows in earthly gloom,
Here, as a mist, I wander all night long,
Until the dawning with a gush of fire
Make blow the little winds and shake the meres.”