Voices of the Break of Day
Morning and birth are ours;
Light that is blown
From our fair lips; and flowers,
Dropped from our hands in showers,
Seeds that are sown:
Song and the bursting buds,
Life of the fields and floods;
Strength that’s full-grown:
And, from our beryl jars,
Filled with the clouds and stars,
Pour we the winds and dew;
While by our eyes of blue
Darkness is rent in two,
Conquered and strown.
Voices of the Dawn
Ye in your darkness are
Dark and infernal;
Subject to death and mar!
But in the spaces far,
Like our effulgent star,
We are eternal.
THE WATER WITCH
See! the milk-white doe is wounded.
He will follow as it bounds
Through the woods. His horn has sounded,
Echoing, for his men and hounds.
But no answering bugle blew.
He has lost his retinue
For the shapely deer that bounded
Past him when his bow he drew.
Not one hound or huntsman follows.
Through the underbrush and moss
Goes the slot; and in the hollows
Of the hills, that he must cross,
He has lost it. He must fare
Over rocks where she-wolves lair;
Wood-pools where the wild-boar wallows:
So he leaves his hunter there.
Through his mind then flashed an olden
Legend told him by the monks:—
Of a girl, whose hair is golden,
Haunting fountains and the trunks
Of the woodlands; who, they say,
Is a white doe all the day,
But when woods are night-enfolden
Turns into an evil fay.
Then the story once his teacher
Told him: of a mountain lake
Demons dwell in; vague of feature,
Human-like; but each a snake,
She is queen of.—Did he hear
Laughter at his startled ear?
Or a bird?—And now, what creature
Is it,—or the wind,—stirs near?