HOW slender, simple, shy, divinely chaste,
She wilting stood,
Her suppleness at pause, by leisure graced,
In robes archaic by the chisel woo’d,
That smoothly flowed around her waist
And all her figure traced,
And at her feet in fluid ripples broke;
A Vestal virgin! but she rather seemed
The Hamadryad of the sculpted oak
Since in that oaken raiment she for ever dreamed.
One finger to her lips she raised,
And turned her dubious glances wide
As one who forward to the future gazed,
But her reluctant body swerved away
As one who held her bounty back with pride.
“Forbear!” her hesitation seemed to say,
While her exulting soul for instant capture cried.
And she was ageless; leisure unperturbed
Lay like a light across her brow
And sanctified her vow;
But that uplifted hand from its austerity
Another spirit stirred,
Spirit of grace, spirit of fantasy,
The wayward spirit of the pagan tree.
Had she stood dreaming by the water’s verge,
Her branches mirrored in the forest pool
Where plashing sunlight flickered and was cool?
Did she so stand
Before the sculptor with his mortal hand
Summoned the mortal maiden to emerge?
And did she open eyes upon a place
All pied and jewelled with the flowers wild,
With king-cups and the pretty daisy mild,
With periwinkle sulking like a child,
And little orchis with his puckered face,
And campion too?
Did these, when first they saw her, race
Around her feet like tiny rivulets?
The bluebells shake for joy? the violets,
Thinking that other Virgin full of grace
Was come amongst them, blush a deeper blue?
Was this her birth upon a world of men,
Where any painter might have seized his hour,
Breathing her swiftly on the canvas then,
Among the lowly flowers a taller flower?
Or any sculptor on the marble limn
Her slenderness serene, her beauty’s dower,
Her lifted hand, her smooth and fragile limb,
Learning a greater art from her than she from him?
So in the prison of her perfect shape
She dwelt for ever virginal, adored,
Whence she might never know escape,
Might never know what mystery lay stored
Beyond the threshold she might never pass,
But where for ever poised and wavering she was,
Threshold of waking youth, as bright and narrow as a sword.
TRIO
SO well she knew them both! yet as she came
Into the room, and heard their speech
Of tragic meshes knotted with her name,
And saw them, foes, but meeting each with each
Closer than friends, souls bared through enmity,
Beneath their startled gaze she thought that she
Broke as the stranger on their conference,
And left them as she stole abashed from thence.