Chapter VII

Home of the red Auroras and the gods!
He who profanes thy perilous threshold,--where
The ancient centuries lair,
And, glacier-throned, thy monarch, Winter, nods,--
Let him beware!
Lest coming on that hoary presence there,
Whose pitiless hand,
Above that hungry land,
An iceberg wields as sceptre, and whose crown
The North Star is, set in a band of frost,
He, too, shall feel the bitterness of that frown,
And, turned to stone, forevermore be lost.

DIONYSIA

The day is dead; and in the west
The slender crescent of the moon--
Diana's crystal-kindled crest--
Sinks hillward in a silvery swoon.
What is the murmur in the dell?
The stealthy whisper and the drip?
A Dryad with her leaf-light trip?
A Naiad o'er her fountain well?--
Who, with white fingers for her comb,
Sleeks her blue hair, and from its curls
Showers slim minnows and pale pearls,
And hollow music of the foam.
What is it in the vistaed ways
That leans and springs, and stoops and sways?--
The naked limbs of one who flees?
An Oread who hesitates
Before the Satyr form that waits,
Crouching to leap, that there she sees?
Or under boughs, reclining cool,
A Hamadryad, like a pool
Of moonlight, palely beautiful?
Or Limnad, with her lilied face,
More lovely than the misty lace
That haunts a star in a firefly place?
Or is it some Leimoniad
In wildwood flowers dimly clad?
Oblong blossoms white as froth,
Or mottled like the tiger-moth;
Or brindled as the brows of death,
Wild of hue and wild of breath:
Here ethereal flame and milk
Blent with velvet and with silk;
Here an iridescent glow
Mixed with satin and with snow:
Pansy, poppy and the pale
Serpolet and galingale;
Mandrake and anemone,
Honey-reservoirs o' the bee;
Cistus and the cyclamen,--
Cheeked like blushing Hebe this,
And the other white as is
Bubbled milk of Venus when
Cupid's baby mouth is pressed,
Rosy, to her rosy breast.
And, besides, all flowers that mate
With aroma, and in hue
Stars and rainbows duplicate
Here on earth for me and you.
Yea! at last mine eyes can see!
'Tis no shadow of the tree
Swaying softly there, but she!--
Mænad, Bassarid, Bacchant,
What you will, who doth enchant
Night with sensuous nudity.
Lo! again I hear her pant
Breasting through the dewy glooms--
Through the glow-worm gleams and glowers
Of the starlight; wood-perfumes
Swoon around her and frail showers
Of the leaflet-tilted rain.
Lo! like love, she comes again
Through the pale voluptuous dusk,
Sweet of limb with breasts of musk.
With her lips, like blossoms, breathing
Honeyed pungence of her kiss,
And her auburn tresses wreathing
Like umbrageous helichrys,
There she stands, like flame and snow,
In the moon's ambrosial glow,
Both her shapely loins low-looped
With the balmy blossoms, drooped,
Of the deep amaracus.
Spiritual, yet sensual,
Lo, she ever greets me thus
In my vision; white and tall,
Her delicious body there,--
Raimented with amorous air,--
To my mind expresses all
The allurements of the world.
And once more I seem to feel
On my soul, like frenzy, hurled
All the passionate past.--I reel,
Greek again in ancient Greece,
In the Pyrrhic revelries;
In the mad and Mænad dance;
Onward dragged with violence:
Pan and old Silenus and
Faunus and a Bacchant band
Round me. Wild my wine-stained hand
O'er tumultuous hair is lifted;
While the flushed and Phallic orgies
Whirl around me; and the marges
Of the wood are torn and rifted
With lascivious laugh and shout.
And barbarian there again,--
Shameless with the shameless rout,
Bacchus lusting in each vein,--
With her pagan lips on mine,
Like a god made drunk with wine,
On I reel; and in the revels
Her loose hair, the dance dishevels,
Blows, and 'thwart my vision swims
All the splendor of her limbs....
So it seems. Yet woods are lonely.
And when I again awake,
I shall find their faces only
Moonbeams in the boughs that shake;
And their revels--but the rush
Of night-winds through bough and brush.
But my dreaming?--is it more
Than mere dreaming? Is a door
Opened in my soul? a curtain
Raised? to let me see for certain
I have lived that life before?

VINE AND SYCAMORE

I

Here where a tree and its wild liana,
Leaning over the streamlet, grow,
Once a nymph, like the moon'd Diana,
Sat in the ages long ago,
Sat with a mortal with whom she had mated,
Sat and smiled with a mortal youth,
Ere he of the forest, the god who hated,
Changed the two into forms uncouth....

II

Once in the woods she had heard a shepherd,
Heard a reed in a golden glade;
Followed, and clad in the skin of a leopard,
Found him fluting within the shade.
Found him sitting with bare brown shoulder,
Lithe and young as a sapling oak,
And leaning over a mossy boulder,
Love in her dryad heart awoke.

III

White she was as a dogwood flower,
Rosy white as a wild-crab bloom,
Fragrant white as a haw-tree bower
Full of sap and the May's perfume.
He who saw her above him burning,
Beautiful, naked, in dawn arrayed,
Deemed her Diana, and from her turning,
Leapt to his feet and fled afraid.

IV

Far she followed and called and pleaded,
Ever he fled with never a look;
Fled, till he came to this spot, deep-reeded,
Came to the bank of this forest brook.
Here for a moment he stopped and listened,
Heard in her voice her heart's despair,
Saw in her eyes the love that glistened,
Sank on her bosom and rested there.

V

Close to her beauty she strained and pressed him,
Held and bound him with kiss on kiss;
Soft with her hands and her lips caressed him,
Sweeter of touch than a blossom is.
Spoke to his heart, and with sweet persuasion
Mastered his soul till its fear was flown;
Smiled on his soul till its mortal evasion
Vanished, and body and soul were her own.

VI

Many a day had they met and mated,
Many a day by this wildwood brook,
When he of the forest, the god who hated,
Came on their love and changed with a look.
There on the shore, while they joyed and jested,
He in the shadows, unseen, espied
Her, like the goddess Diana breasted,
Him, like Endymion by her side.

VII

Lo! at a word, at a sign, their folded
Limbs and bodies assumed new form,
Hers to the shape of a tree were molded,
His to a vine with surrounding arm....
So they stand with their limbs enlacing,
Nymph and mortal, upon this shore,
He forever a vine embracing
Her, a silvery sycamore.

GENIUS LOCI

I

What wood-god, on this water's mossy curb,
Lost in reflections of Earth's loveliness,
Did I, just now, unconsciously disturb?
I who haphazard, wandering at a guess,
Came on this spot, wherein with gold and flame
Of buds and blooms the Season writes its name.--
Ah, me! could I have seen him ere alarm
Of my approach aroused him from his calm!
As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap,
Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warm
As a wood-rose, and filled the air with balm
Of his wild breath as with ethereal sap.

II

Does not the moss retain some slight impress,
Green-dented down, of where he lay or trod?
Do not the flowers, so reticent, confess
With conscious looks the contact of a god?
Does not the very water garrulously
Boast the indulgence of a deity?
And hark!--in burly beech and sycamore
How all the birds proclaim it! and the leaves
Rejoice with clappings of their myriad hands!
And shall not I believe, too, and adore,
With such wide proof?--Yea, though my soul perceives
No evident presence, still it understands.

III

And for a while it moves me to lie down
Here on the spot his god-head sanctified:
Mayhap some dream he dreamed may linger, brown
And young as joy, around the forest side:
Some dream within whose heart lives no disdain
For such as I whose love is sweet and sane;
That may repeat, so none but I may hear--
As one might tell a pearl-strung rosary--
Some epic that the leaves have learned to croon,
Some lyric whispered in the wildflower's ear,
Whose murmurous lines are sung by bird and bee,
And all the insects of the night and noon.

IV

For, all around me, upon field and hill,
Enchantment lies as of mysterious flutes;
As if the music of a god's good-will
Had taken on material attributes
In blooms, like chords; and in the water-gleam,
That runs its silvery scales on every stream;
In sunbeam bars, up which the butterfly,
A golden note, vibrates then flutters on--
Inaudible tunes, blown on the pipes of Pan,
That have assumed a visible entity,
And drugged the air with beauty so, a Faun,
Behold, I seem, and am no more a man.

DITHYRAMBICS