Gargaphie

There the ragged sunlight layTawny on thick ferns and grayOn dark waters: dimmer,Lone and deep, the cypress groveBowered mystery and woveBraided lights, like those that loveOn the pearl plumes of a doveFaint to gleam and glimmer.

There centennial pine and oakInto stormy cadence broke:Hollow rocks gloomed, slanting,Echoing in dim arcade,Looming with long moss, that madeTwilight streaks in tatters laid:Where the wild hart, hunt-affrayed,Plunged the water, panting.

Poppies of a sleepy goldMooned the gray-green darkness rolledDown its vistas, makingWisp-like blurs of flame. And paleStole the dim deer down the vale:And the haunting nightingaleThrobbed unseen--the olden taleAll its wild heart breaking.

There the hazy serpolet,Dewy cistus, blooming wet,Blushed on bank and bowlder;There the cyclamen, as wanAs first footsteps of the dawn,Carpeted the spotted lawn:Where the nude nymph, dripping drawn,Basked a wildflower shoulder.

In the citrine shadows thereWhat tall presences and fair,Godlike, stood!--or, graciousAs the rock-rose there that grew,Delicate and dim as dew,Stepped from boles of oaks, and drewFaunlike forms to follow, whoFilled the forest spacious!--

Guarding that BoeotianValley so no foot of manSoiled its silence holyWith profaning tread--save one,The Hyantian: Actæon,Who beheld, and might not shunPale Diana's wrath; undoneBy his own mad folly.

Lost it lies--that valley: sleepsIn serene enchantment; keepsBeautiful its banishedBowers that no man may see;Fountains that her deityHaunts, and every rock and treeWhere her hunt goes swinging freeAs in ages vanished.