Green, watery jets of light let through The rippling foliage drenched with dew; And golden glimmers, warm and dim, That in the vistaed distance swim;
Where,‘ round the wood-spring's oozy urn, The limp, loose fronds of forest fern Trail like the tresses, green and wet, A wood-nymph binds with violet.
O'er rocks that bulge and roots that knot The emerald-amber mosses clot; From matted walls of brier and brush The elder nods its plumes of plush;
And, Argus-eyed with many a bloom, The wild-rose breathes its wild perfume; May-apples, ripening yellow, lean With oblong fruit, a lemon-green,
Near Indian-turnips, long of stem, That bear an acorn-oval gem, As if some woodland Bacchus there,— While braiding locks of hyacinth hair
With ivy-tod,— had idly tost His thyrsus down and so had lost: And blood-root, that from scarlet wombs Puts forth, in spring, its milk-white blooms,
That then like starry footsteps shine Of April under beech and pine; At which the gnarled eyes of trees Stare, big as Fauns’ at Dryades,
That bend above a fountain's spar As white and naked as a star. The stagnant stream flows sleepily Thick with its lily-pads; the bee,—
All honey-drunk, a Bassarid,— Booms past the mottled toad, that, hid In calamus-plants and blue-eyed grass, Beside the water's pooling glass,
Silenus-like, eyes stolidly The Maenad-glittering dragonfly. And pennyroyal and peppermint Pour dry-hot odours without stint
From fields and banks of many streams; And in their scent one almost seems To see Demeter pass, her breath Sweet with her triumph over death.—
A haze of floating saffron; sound Of shy, crisp creepings o'er the ground; The dip and stir of twig and leaf; Tempestuous gusts of spices brief
Borne over bosks of sassafras By winds that foot it on the grass; Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings, That hint at untold hidden things —
Pan and Sylvanus who of old Kept sacred each wild wood and wold. A wily light beneath the trees Quivers and dusks with every breeze —
A Hamadryad, haply, who,— Culling her morning meal of dew From frail, accustomed cups of flowers,— Now sees some Satyr in the bowers,
Or hears his goat-hoof snapping press Some brittle branch, and in distress Shrinks back; her dark, dishevelled hair Veiling her limbs one instant there.
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