‘Alone
Through forests evergreen,
By legend known,
By no eye seen,
Unmated
Unbaited
Untrembling between
The shifting shadows
The sudden echoes,
Deathless I go
Unheard, unseen,’
Says the White Doe.
Unicorn with bursting heart
Breath of love has drawn
On his desolate crags apart
At rumour of dawn,
Has volleyed forth his pride
Twenty thousand years mute,
Tossed his horn from side to side
Lunged with his foot.
‘Like a storm of sand I run
Breaking the desert’s boundaries,
I go in hiding from the sun
In thick shade of trees
Straight was the track I took
Across the plains, but here with briar
And mire the tangled alleys crook
Baulking my desire.
Ho, there! what glinted white?
(A bough still shakes)
What was it darted from my sight
Through the forest brakes?
Where are you fled from me?
I pursue, you fade;
I run, you hide from me
In the dark glade.
Towering straight the trees grow,
The grass grows thick.
Where you are, I do not know,
You fly so quick.’
‘Seek me not here
Lodged among mortal deer,’
Says the White Doe,
‘Keeping one place
Held by the ties of space,’
Says the White Doe.
‘I
Equally
In air
Above your bare
Hill crest, your basalt lair,
Mirage reflected drink
At the clear pool’s brink
With tigers at play
In the glare of day
Blithely I stray,
Under shadow of myrtle
With Phoenix and his Turtle
For all time true,
With Gryphons at grass
Under the Upas,
Sipping warm dew
That falls hourly new,
I, unattainable
Complete, incomprehensible
No mate for you.
In sun’s beam
Or star-gleam,
No mate for you
No mate for you,’
Says the White Doe.