GARGAPHIE

There the ragged sunlight lay

Tawny on thick ferns and gray

On dark waters: dimmer,

Lone and deep, the cypress grove

Bowered mystery and wove

Braided lights, like those that love

On the pearl plumes of a dove

Faint to gleam and glimmer.

There centennial pine and oak

Into stormy cadence broke:

Hollow rocks gloomed, slanting,

Echoing in dim arcade,

Looming with long moss, that made

Twilight streaks in tatters laid:

Where the wild hart, hunt-affrayed,

Plunged the water, panting.

Poppies of a sleepy gold

Mooned the gray-green darkness rolled

Down its vistas, making

Wisp-like blurs of flame. And pale

Stole the dim deer down the vale:

And the haunting nightingale

Throbbed unseen — the olden tale

All its wild heart breaking.

There the hazy serpolet,

Dewy cistus, blooming wet,

Blushed on bank and bowlder;

There the cyclamen, as wan

As first footsteps of the dawn,

Carpeted the spotted lawn:

Where the nude nymph, dripping drawn,

Basked a wildflower shoulder.

In the citrine shadows there

What tall presences and fair,

Godlike, stood!— or, gracious

As the rock-rose there that grew,

Delicate and dim as dew,

Stepped from boles of oaks, and drew

Faunlike forms to follow, who

Filled the forest spacious!—

Guarding that Boeotian

Valley so no foot of man

Soiled its silence holy

With profaning tread — save one,

The Hyantian: Actæon,

Who beheld, and might not shun

Pale Diana's wrath; undone

By his own mad folly.

Lost it lies — that valley: sleeps

In serene enchantment; keeps

Beautiful its banished

Bowers that no man may see;

Fountains that her deity

Haunts, and every rock and tree

Where her hunt goes swinging free

As in ages vanished.