No man who lives and is not wise
With love for common flowers and trees,
Bee, bird, and beast, and brook, and breeze,
And rocks and hills and skies,—
Search where he will,—shall ever see
One flutter of her drapery,
One glimpse of limbs, or hair, or eyes
Of beautiful Iothera.
THE LIMNAD
I
The lake she haunts gleams dreamily
'Twixt sleepy boughs of melody,
Set 'mid the hills beside the sea,
In tangled bush and brier;
Where the ghostly sunsets write
Wondrous things in golden light;
And above the pine-crowned height,
Clouds of twilight, rosy white,
Build their towers of fire.
II
'Mid the rushes there that swing,
Flowering flags where voices sing
When low winds are murmuring,
Murmuring to stars that glitter;
Blossom-white, with purple locks,
Underneath the stars' still flocks,
In the dusky waves she rocks,
Rocks, and all the landscape mocks
With a song most sweet and bitter.
III
Soft it sounds, at first, as dreams
Filled with tears that fall in streams;
Then it soars, until it seems
Beauty's very self hath spoken;
And the woods grow silent quite,
Stars wax faint and flowers turn white;
And the nightingales that light
Near, or hear her through the night,
Die, their hearts with longing broken.
IV
Dark, dim and sad o'er mournful lands,
White-throated stars heaped in her hands,
Like wildwood buds, the Twilight stands,
The Twilight dreaming lingers;
Listening where the Limnad sings
Witcheries, whose beauty brings
A great moon from hidden springs,
Pale with amorous quiverings
Feet of fire and silvery fingers.