THE VALE OF TEMPE
All night I lay upon the rocks:
And now the dawn comes up this way,
One great star trembling in her locks
Of rosy ray.
I can not tell the things I’ve seen,
The things I’ve heard I dare not speak
The dawn is breaking, gold and green,
O’er vale and peak.
My soul hath kept its tryst again
With her as once in ages past,
In that lost life, I know not when,
Which was my last:
When she was dryad, I was faun,
And lone we loved in Tempe’s Vale,
Where once we saw Endymion
Pass passion-pale:
Where once we saw him clasp and meet
Among the pines, with kiss on kiss,
Moon-breasted and most heavenly sweet,
White Artemis.
Where often, Bacchus-borne, we heard
The Mænad shout, wild-revelling:
And filled with witchcraft, past all word,
The Limnad sing.
Bloom-bodied ’mid the twilight trees
We saw the Oread, who shone
Fair as the forms Praxiteles
Carved out of stone.
And oft, goat-footed, in a glade
We marked the Satyrs dance, and great,
Man-muscled, like the oaks that shade
Dodona’s gate,
Fierce Centaurs hoof a torrent’s bank
With wind-tossed manes, or leap a crag,
While swift, the arrow in its flank,
Swept by the stag.