In Mythic Seas.

'Neath saffron stars and satin skies, dark-blue,     Between dim sylvan isles, a happy two.     We sailed, and from the siren-haunted shore,     All mystic in its mist, the soft gale bore     The Siren's song, while on the ghostly steeps     Strange foliage grew, deeps folding upon deeps,     That hung and beamed with blossom and with bud,     Thick-powdered, pallid, or like urns of blood     Dripping, and blowing from wide mouths of blooms     On our bare brows cool gales of sweet perfumes.     While from the yellow stars that splashed the skies     O'er our light shallop dropped soft mysteries     Of calm and sleep, until the yellower moon     Rose full of fire above a dark lagoon;     And as she rose the nightingales on sprays     Of heavy, shadowy roses burst in praise     Of her wild loveliness, with boisterous pain     Wailing far off around a ruined fane.     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.