Gargaphie

"Succinctae sacra Dianae". - OVID I     There the ragged sunlight lay     Tawny on thick ferns and gray     On dark waters: dimmer,     Lone and deep, the cypress grove     Bowered mystery and wove     Braided lights, like those that love     On the pearl plumes of a dove     Faint to gleam and glimmer. II     There centennial pine and oak     Into stormy cadence broke:     Hollow rocks gloomed, slanting,     Echoing in dim arcade,     Looming with long moss, that made     Twilight streaks in tatters laid:     Where the wild hart, hunt-affrayed,     Plunged the water, panting. III     Poppies of a sleepy gold     Mooned the gray-green darkness rolled     Down its vistas, making     Wisp-like blurs of flame. And pale     Stole the dim deer down the vale:     And the haunting nightingale     Throbbed unseen - the olden tale     All its wild heart breaking. IV     There the hazy serpolet,     Dewy cistus, blooming wet,     Blushed on bank and bowlder;     There the cyclamen, as wan     As first footsteps of the dawn,     Carpeted the spotted lawn:     Where the nude nymph, dripping drawn,     Basked a wildflower shoulder. V     In the citrine shadows there     What tall presences and fair,     Godlike, stood! - or, gracious     As the rock-rose there that grew,     Delicate and dim as dew,     Stepped from boles of oaks, and drew     Faunlike forms to follow, who     Filled the forest spacious! - VI     Guarding that Boeotian     Valley so no foot of man     Soiled its silence holy     With profaning tread - save one,     The Hyantian: Acton,     Who beheld, and might not shun     Pale Diana's wrath; undone     By his own mad folly. VII     Lost it lies - that valley: sleeps     In serene enchantment; keeps     Beautiful its banished     Bowers that no man may see;     Fountains that her deity     Haunts, and every rock and tree     Where her hunt goes swinging free     As in ages vanished.