The Dead Oread

Her heart is still and leaps no more     With holy passion when the breeze,     Her whilom playmate, as before,     Comes with the language of the bees,     Sad songs her mountain cedars sing,     And water-music murmuring.     Her calm white feet, - erst fleet and fast     As Daphne's when a god pursued, -     No more will dance like sunlight past     The gold-green vistas of the wood,     Where every quailing floweret     Smiled into life where they were set.     Hers were the limbs of living light,     And breasts of snow; as virginal     As mountain drifts; and throat as white     As foam of mountain waterfall;     And hyacinthine curls, that streamed     Like crag-born mists, and gloomed and gleamed.     Her presence breathed such scents as haunt     Moist, mountain dells and solitudes;     Aromas wild as some wild plant     That fills with sweetness all the woods:     And comradeships of stars and skies     Shone in the azure of her eyes.     Her grave be by a mossy rock     Upon the top of some wild hill,     Removed, remote from men who mock     The myths and dreams of life they kill:     Where all of beauty, naught of lust     May guard her solitary dust.