In Arcady

I remember, when a child,     How within the April wild     Once I walked with Mystery     In the groves of Arcady....     Through the boughs, before, behind,     Swept the mantle of the wind,     Thunderous and unconfined.     Overhead the curving moon     Pierced the twilight: a cocoon,     Golden, big with unborn wings -     Beauty, shaping spiritual things,     Vague, impatient of the night,     Eager for its heavenward flight     Out of darkness into light.     Here and there the oaks assumed     Satyr aspects; shadows gloomed,     Hiding, of a dryad look;     And the naiad-frantic brook,     Crying, fled the solitude,     Filled with terror of the wood,     Or some faun-thing that pursued.     In the dead leaves on the ground     Crept a movement; rose a sound:     Everywhere the silence ticked     As with hands of things that picked     At the loam, or in the dew, -     Elvish sounds that crept or flew, -     Beak-like, pushing surely through.     Down the forest, overhead,     Stammering a dead leaf fled,     Filled with elemental fear     Of some dark destruction near -     One, whose glowworm eyes I saw     Hag with flame the crooked haw,     Which the moon clutched like a claw.     Gradually beneath the tree     Grew a shape; a nudity:     Lithe and slender; silent as     Growth of tree or blade of grass;     Brown and silken as the bloom     Of the trillium in the gloom,     Visible as strange perfume.     For an instant there it stood,     Smiling on me in the wood:     And I saw its hair was green     As the leaf-sheath, gold of sheen:     And its eyes an azure wet,     From within which seemed to jet     Sapphire lights and violet.     Swiftly by I saw it glide;     And the dark was deified:     Wild before it everywhere     Gleamed the greenness of its hair;     And around it danced a light,     Soft, the sapphire of its sight,     Making witchcraft of the night.     On the branch above, the bird     Trilled to it a dreamy word:     In its bud the wild bee droned     Honeyed greeting, drowsy-toned:     And the brook forgot the gloom,     Hushed its heart, and, wrapped in bloom,     Breathed a welcome of perfume.     To its beauty bush and tree     Stretched sweet arms of ecstasy;     And the soul within the rock     Lichen-treasures did unlock     As upon it fell its eye;     And the earth, that felt it nigh,     Into wildflowers seemed to sigh....     Was it dryad? was it faun?     Wandered from the times long gone.     Was it sylvan? was it fay? -     Dim survivor of the day     When Religion peopled streams,     Woods and rocks with shapes like gleams, -     That invaded then my dreams?     Was it shadow? was it shape?     Or but fancy's wild escape? -     Of my own child's world the charm     That assumed material form? -     Of my soul the mystery,     That the spring revealed to me,     There in long-lost Arcady?