And minnow-white the Naiad there
We watched, foam-shouldered, in her stream,
Wringing the moisture from her hair
Of emerald gleam.
We saw the oak unclose and, brown,
Sap-scented, from its door of bark
The Hamadryad young step down:
Or, crouching dark
Within the oak’s old heart, we felt
Her eyes, that pierced the fibrous gloom;
Her breath, that was the musk we smelt,
The wild perfume.
There is no flower that opens glad
Wide eyes of dawn and sunset hue,
As fair as the Leimoniad
We saw there too:
That flower-divinity, rose-born,
Of sunlight and white dew, whose blood
Is fragrance, and whose heart of morn
A crimson bud.
There is no star that rises white,
To tiptoe down the deeps of dusk,
Sweet as the moony Nymphs of Night
With breasts of musk,
We met among the mystery
And hush of forests, where, afar,
We watched their hearts beat glimmeringly,
Each heart a star.
There is no beam that rays the marge
Of mist that trails from cape to cape,
From panther-haunted gorge to gorge,
Bright as the shape
Of her, the one Auloniad,
That, born of wind and grassy gleams,
Silvered upon our sight, dim-clad
In foam of streams.
All, all of these I saw again,
Or dreamed I saw, as there, ah me!
Upon the cliffs, above the plain,
In Thessaly,
I lay, while Mount Olympus helmed
Its brow with moon-effulgence deep,
And, far below, vague, overwhelmed
With reedy sleep,