DES_.

I.

My feet, used to pine-needles, moss and turf,
And the gray boulders at the lip o' the sea,
Where the cold brine jets up its creamy surf,
Now tread once more these city ways, unloved by me,
Hateful and hot, gross with iniquity.
And so I grieve,
Grieve when I wake, or at high blinding noon
Or when the moon
Mocks this sad Ninevah where the throngs weave
Their jostling ways by day, their paths by night;
Where darkness is not--where the streets burn bright
With hectic fevers, eloquent of death!
I gasp for breath....
Visions have I, visions! So sweet they seem
That from this welter of men and things I turn, to dream
Of the dim Wood-world, calling out to me.
Where forest-virgins I half glimpse, half see
With cool mysterious fingers beckoning!
Where vine-wreathed woodland altars sunlit burn,
Or Dryads dance their mystic rounds and sing,
Sing high, sing low, with magic cadences
That once the wild oaks of Dodona heard;
And every wood-note bids me burst asunder
The bonds that hold me from the leaf-hid bird.
I quaff thee, O Nepenthe! Ah, the wonder
Grows, that there be who buy their wealth, their ease
By damning serfs to cities, hot and blurred,
Far from thy golden quest, Hesperides!...

II.

I see this August sun again
Sheer up high heaven wheel his angry way;
And hordes of men
Bleared with unrestful sleep rise up another day,
Their bodies racked with aftermaths of toil.
Over the city, in each gasping street,
Shudders a haze of heat,
Reverberant from pillar, span and plinth.
Once more, cribbed in this monstrous labyrinth
Sacrificed to the Minotaur of Greed
Men bear the turmoil, glare, sweat, brute inharmonies;
Denial of each simplest human need,
Loss of life's meaning as day lags on day;
And my rebellious spirit rises, flies
In dreams to the green quiet wood away,
Away! Away!

III.

And now, and now...I feel the forest-moss...
Come! On these moss-beds let me lie with Pan,
Twined with the ivy-vine in tendrill'd curls,
And I will hold all gold, that hampers man,
Only the ashes of base, barren dross!
On with the love-dance of the pagan girls!
The pagan girls with lips all rosy-red,
With breasts upgirt and foreheads garlanded,
With fair white foreheads nobly garlanded!