Poems / by Madison Cawein ; with a foreward by William Dean Howells [electronic text]

IV
THE HAMADRYAD

She stood among the longest ferns The valley held; and in her hand One blossom, like the light that burnsVermilion o'er a sunset land; And round her hair a twisted band Of pink-pierced mountain-laurel blooms: And darker than dark pools, that stand

Below the star-communing glooms, Her eyes beneath her hair's perfumes.

I saw the moonbeam sandals on Her flowerlike feet, that seemed too chaste To tread true gold: and, like the dawn On splendid peaks that lord a waste Of solitude lost gods have graced, Her face: she stood there, faultless-hipped, Bound as with cestused silver,—chased With acorn-cup and crown, and tipped With oak leaves,—whence her chiton slipped.

Limbs that the gods call loveliness! — The grace and glory of all Greece Wrought in one marble shape were less Than her perfection! — 'Mid the trees I saw her — and time seemed to cease For me. — And, lo! I lived my old Greek life again of classic ease, Barbarian as the myths that rolled Me back into the Age of Gold.