ELUSION

My soul goes out to her who says,

“Come, follow me and cast off care!”

Then tosses back her sun-bright hair,

And like a flower before me sways

Between the green leaves and my gaze:

This creature like a girl, who smiles

Into my eyes and softly lays

Her hand in mine and leads me miles,

Long miles of haunted forest ways.

Sometimes she seems a faint perfume,

A fragrance that a flower exhaled

And God gave form to; now, unveiled,

A sunbeam making gold the gloom

Of vines that roof some woodland room

Of boughs; and now the silvery sound

Of streams her presence doth assume —

Music, from which, in dreaming drowned,

A crystal shape she seems to bloom.

Sometimes she seems the light that lies

On foam of waters where the fern

Shimmers and drips; now, at some turn

Of woodland, bright against the skies,

She seems the rainbowed mist that flies;

And now the mossy fire that breaks

Beneath the feet in azure eyes

Of flowers; now the wind that shakes

Pale petals from the bough that sighs.

Sometimes she lures me with a song;

Sometimes she guides me with a laugh;

Her white hand is a magic staff,

Her look a spell to lead me long:

Though she be weak and I be strong,

She needs but shake her happy hair,

But glance her eyes, and, right or wrong,

My soul must follow — anywhere

She wills — far from the world's loud throng.

Sometimes I think that she must be

No part of earth, but merely this —

The fair, elusive thing we miss

In Nature, that we dream we see

Yet never see: that goldenly

Beckons; that, limbed with rose and pearl,

The Greek made a divinity:—

A nymph, a god, a glimmering girl,

That haunts the forest's mystery.