When I go forth to greet the glad-faced Spring, Just at the time of opening apple-buds, When brooks are laughing, winds are whispering, On babbling hillsides or in warbling woods,
There is an unseen presence that eludes:— Perhaps a Dryad, in whose tresses cling The loamy odors of old solitudes, Who, from her beechen doorway, calls; and leads
My soul to follow; now with dimpling words Of leaves; and now with syllables of birds; While here and there — is it her limbs that swing? Or restless sunlight on the moss and weeds?
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.
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?
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.
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