The Vale Of Tempe

All night I lay upon the rocks: And now the dawn comes up this way, One great star trembling in her locks Of rosy ray.

I can not tell the things I’ve seen, The things I’ve heard I dare not speak The dawn is breaking, gold and green, O’er vale and peak.

My soul hath kept its tryst again With her as once in ages past, In that lost life, I know not when, Which was my last:

When she was dryad, I was faun, And lone we loved in Tempe’s Vale, Where once we saw Endymion Pass passion-pale:

Where once we saw him clasp and meet Among the pines, with kiss on kiss, Moon-breasted and most heavenly sweet, White Artemis.

Where often, Bacchus-borne, we heard The Mænad shout, wild-revelling: And filled with witchcraft, past all word, The Limnad sing.

Bloom-bodied ’mid the twilight trees We saw the Oread, who shone Fair as the forms Praxiteles Carved out of stone.

And oft, goat-footed, in a glade We marked the Satyrs dance, and great, Man-muscled, like the oaks that shade Dodona’s gate,

Fierce Centaurs hoof a torrent’s bank With wind-tossed manes, or leap a crag, While swift, the arrow in its flank, Swept by the stag.

And minnow-white the Naiad there We watched, foam-shouldered, in her stream, Wringing the moisture from her hair Of emerald gleam.

We saw the oak unclose and, brown, Sap-scented, from its door of bark The Hamadryad young step down: Or, crouching dark

Within the oak’s old heart, we felt Her eyes, that pierced the fibrous gloom; Her breath, that was the musk we smelt, The wild perfume.

There is no flower that opens glad Wide eyes of dawn and sunset hue, As fair as the Leimoniad We saw there too:

That flower-divinity, rose-born, Of sunlight and white dew, whose blood Is fragrance, and whose heart of morn A crimson bud.

There is no star that rises white, To tiptoe down the deeps of dusk, Sweet as the moony Nymphs of Night With breasts of musk, We met among the mystery And hush of forests, where, afar, We watched their hearts beat glimmeringly, Each heart a star.

There is no beam that rays the marge Of mist that trails from cape to cape, From panther-haunted gorge to gorge, Bright as the shape

Of her, the one Auloniad, That, born of wind and grassy gleams, Silvered upon our sight, dim-clad In foam of streams.

All, all of these I saw again, Or dreamed I saw, as there, ah me! Upon the cliffs, above the plain, In Thessaly,

I lay, while Mount Olympus helmed Its brow with moon-effulgence deep, And, far below, vague, overwhelmed With reedy sleep,

Peneus flowed, and, murmuring, sighed, Meseemed, for its dead gods, whose ghosts Through its dark forests seemed to glide In whispering hosts....

’Mid whose pale shapes again I spoke With her, my soul, as I divine, Dim ’neath some gnarled Olympian oak, Or Ossan pine,

Till down the slopes of heaven came Those daughters of the Dawn, the Hours, Clothed on with raiment blue of flame, And crowned with flowers;

When she, with whom my soul once more Had trysted--limbed of light and air-- Whom to my breast,--(as oft of yore In Tempe there,

When she was dryad, I was faun)-- I clasped and held, and pressed and kissed, Within my arms, as broke the dawn, Became a mist.