Loudly now as swiftly, swiftly,
O’er the glimmering sands she speeds;
Wildly now as in the furzes
From the piercing spikes she bleeds.
Deeply and with direful anguish,
As above each crimson drop
Passion checks the god Apollo,
And love bids him weep and stop.—
He above each drop of crimson
Shadowing—like the laurel leaf
That above himself will shadow—
Sheds a fadeless look of grief.
Then with love’s remorseful discord,
With its own desire at war,
Sighing turns, while dimly fleeting
Daphne flies the chase afar.
But all nature is against her!
Pan, with all his sylvan troop,
Thro’ the vista’d woodland valleys
Blocks her course with cry and whoop!
In the twilights of the thickets
Trees bend down their gnarled boughs,
Wild green leaves and low curved branches
Hold her hair and beat her brows.
Many a brake of brushwood covert,
Where cold darkness slumbers mute,
Slips a shrub to thwart her passage,
Slides a hand to clutch her foot.
Glens and glades of lushest verdure
Toil her in their tawny mesh,
Wilder-woofed ways and alleys
Lock her struggling limbs in leash.
Feathery grasses, flowery mosses,
Knot themselves to make her trip;
Sprays and stubborn sprigs outstretching
Put a bridle on her lip;
Many a winding lane betrays her,
Many a sudden bosky shoot,
And her knee makes many a stumble
O’er some hidden damp old root,