THE DEAD OREAD

Her heart is still and leaps no more

With holy passion when the breeze,

Her whilom playmate, as before,

Comes with the language of the bees,

Sad songs her mountain cedars sing,

And water-music murmuring.

Her calm white feet,— erst fleet and fast

As Daphne's when a god pursued,—

No more will dance like sunlight past

The gold-green vistas of the wood,

Where every quailing floweret

Smiled into life where they were set.

Hers were the limbs of living light,

And breasts of snow; as virginal

As mountain drifts; and throat as white

As foam of mountain waterfall;

And hyacinthine curls, that streamed

Like crag-born mists, and gloomed and gleamed.

Her presence breathed such scents as haunt

Moist, mountain dells and solitudes;

Aromas wild as some wild plant

That fills with sweetness all the woods:

And comradeships of stars and skies

Shone in the azure of her eyes.

Her grave be by a mossy rock

Upon the top of some wild hill,

Removed, remote from men who mock

The myths and dreams of life they kill:

Where all of beauty, naught of lust

May guard her solitary dust.