Blooms of the Berry

And 'round our lazy keel that dipped to swing
The spirits of the foam came whispering;
And from dank Neptune's coral-columned caves
Heard the Oceanids rise thro' the waves;
Saw their smooth limbs cold-glimmering in the spray,
Tumultuous bosoms panting with their play;
Their oozy tresses, tossed unto the breeze,
Flash sea-green brightness o'er the tumbled seas.
'Mid columned isles, glance vaguely thro' the trees,
We watched the Satyrs chase the Dryades;
Heard Pan's fierce trebles and the Triton's horn
Sound from the rock-lashed foam when rose the Morn
With chilly fingers dewing all the skies,
That blushed for love and closed their starry eyes.
The Naiad saw sweet smiling, in white mist,
Half hidden in a bay of amethyst
Her polished limbs, and at her hollow ear
A shell's pink labyrinth held up to hear
Dim echoes of the Siren's haunting strains
Emprisoned in its chords of crimson veins.
And stealing wily from a grove of pines
The Oread in cincture of green vines,
One twinkling foot half buried in the red
Of a deep dimpled, crumpled poppy bed —
Like to the star of eve, when, lapsing low,
Faint clouds that with the sunset colors glow
Slip down in scarlet o'er its crystal white,
It shining, tear-like, partly veils its light.
Her wine-red lips half-parted in surprise,
And expectation in her bright blue eyes,
While slyly from a young oak coppice peers
The wanton Faun with furry, pointed ears.
He leaps, she flies as flies the startled nymph
When Pan pursues her from her wonted lymph,
Diana sees, and on her wooded hills
Stays her fair band, the stag hounds' clamor stills.
Already nearer glow the Oread's charms;
To seize them Faunus strains his hairy arms —
A senseless statue of white, weeping stone
Fills his embrace; the Oread is gone.
The stag-hounds bay, Dian resumes the chase,
While the astonished Faun's bewildered face
Paints all his wonderment, and, wondering,
He bends above the sculpture of the spring.

We sailed; and many a morn of breathing balm,
Purpureal, graced us in that season calm;
And it was life to thee and me and love
With the fair myths below, our God above,
To sail in golden sunsets and emerge
In golden morns upon a fretless surge.
But ah, alas! the stars that dot the blue
Shine not alway; the clouds must gather too.
I knew not how it came, but in a while
Myself I found cast on an arid isle
Alone and barkless, soaked and wan with dread,
The seas in wrath and thunder overhead,
Deep down in coral caverns my pale love,
No myths below, no God, it seemed, above.

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 ashes sing
And hidden fountains' whispering.

Her calm, white feet, erst fleet and fast
As Daphne's when a Faun pursued,
No more will dance like sunlight past
The dim-green vistas of the wood,
Where ev'ry quailing floweret
Smiled into life where they were set.

Hers were the limbs of living light
Most beautiful and virginal,
God-graceful and as godly white,
And wild as beautiful withal,
And hyacinthine curls that broke
In color when a wind awoke.

The wild aromas weird that haunt
Moist bloomy dells and solitudes
About her presence seemed to pant,
The happy life of all her moods;
Ambrosial smiles and amorous eyes
Whose luster would a god surprise.

Her grave be by a dripping rock,
A mossy dingle of the hill,
Remote from Bacchanals that mock,
Wine-wild, the long, mad nights and still,
Where no unhallowed Pan with lust
May mar her melancholy dust.

APHRODITE

Apollo never smote a lovelier strain,