Elusion

I     My soul goes out to her who says,     "Come, follow me and cast off care!"     Then tosses back her sun-bright hair,     And like a flower before me sways     Between the green leaves and my gaze:     This creature like a girl, who smiles     Into my eyes and softly lays     Her hand in mine and leads me miles,     Long miles of haunted forest ways. II     Sometimes she seems a faint perfume,     A fragrance that a flower exhaled     And God gave form to; now, unveiled,     A sunbeam making gold the gloom     Of vines that roof some woodland room     Of boughs; and now the silvery sound     Of streams her presence doth assume -     Music, from which, in dreaming drowned,     A crystal shape she seems to bloom. III     Sometimes she seems the light that lies     On foam of waters where the fern     Shimmers and drips; now, at some turn     Of woodland, bright against the skies,     She seems the rainbowed mist that flies;     And now the mossy fire that breaks     Beneath the feet in azure eyes     Of flowers; now the wind that shakes     Pale petals from the bough that sighs. IV     Sometimes she lures me with a song;     Sometimes she guides me with a laugh;     Her white hand is a magic staff,     Her look a spell to lead me long:     Though she be weak and I be strong,     She needs but shake her happy hair,     But glance her eyes, and, right or wrong,     My soul must follow - anywhere     She wills - far from the world's loud throng. V     Sometimes I think that she must be     No part of earth, but merely this -     The fair, elusive thing we miss     In Nature, that we dream we see     Yet never see: that goldenly     Beckons; that, limbed with rose and pearl,     The Greek made a divinity: -     A nymph, a god, a glimmering girl,     That haunts the forest's mystery.