IN ARCADY

I remember, when a child,

How within the April wild

Once I walked with Mystery

In the groves of Arcady....

Through the boughs, before, behind,

Swept the mantle of the wind,

Thunderous and unconfined.

Overhead the curving moon

Pierced the twilight: a cocoon,

Golden, big with unborn wings —

Beauty, shaping spiritual things,

Vague, impatient of the night,

Eager for its heavenward flight

Out of darkness into light.

Here and there the oaks assumed

Satyr aspects; shadows gloomed,

Hiding, of a dryad look;

And the naiad-frantic brook,

Crying, fled the solitude,

Filled with terror of the wood,

Or some faun-thing that pursued.

In the dead leaves on the ground

Crept a movement; rose a sound:

Everywhere the silence ticked

As with hands of things that picked

At the loam, or in the dew,—

Elvish sounds that crept or flew,—

Beak-like, pushing surely through.

Down the forest, overhead,

Stammering a dead leaf fled,

Filled with elemental fear

Of some dark destruction near —

One, whose glowworm eyes I saw

Hag with flame the crooked haw,

Which the moon clutched like a claw.

Gradually beneath the tree

Grew a shape; a nudity:

Lithe and slender; silent as

Growth of tree or blade of grass;

Brown and silken as the bloom

Of the trillium in the gloom,

Visible as strange perfume.

For an instant there it stood,

Smiling on me in the wood:

And I saw its hair was green

As the leaf-sheath, gold of sheen:

And its eyes an azure wet,

From within which seemed to jet

Sapphire lights and violet.

Swiftly by I saw it glide;

And the dark was deified:

Wild before it everywhere

Gleamed the greenness of its hair;

And around it danced a light,

Soft, the sapphire of its sight,

Making witchcraft of the night.

On the branch above, the bird

Trilled to it a dreamy word:

In its bud the wild bee droned

Honeyed greeting, drowsy-toned:

And the brook forgot the gloom,

Hushed its heart, and, wrapped in bloom,

Breathed a welcome of perfume.

To its beauty bush and tree

Stretched sweet arms of ecstasy;

And the soul within the rock

Lichen-treasures did unlock

As upon it fell its eye;

And the earth, that felt it nigh,

Into wildflowers seemed to sigh....

Was it dryad? was it faun?

Wandered from the times long gone.

Was it sylvan? was it fay?—

Dim survivor of the day

When Religion peopled streams,

Woods and rocks with shapes like gleams,—

That invaded then my dreams?

Was it shadow? was it shape?

Or but fancy's wild escape?—

Of my own child's world the charm

That assumed material form?—

Of my soul the mystery,

That the spring revealed to me,

There in long-lost Arcady?