Genius Loci

I     What wood-god, on this water's mossy curb,     Lost in reflections of earth's loveliness,     Did I, just now, unconsciously disturb?     I, who haphazard, wandering at a guess,     Came on this spot, wherein, with gold and flame     Of buds and blooms, the season writes its name.--     Ah, me! could I have seen him ere alarm     Of my approach aroused him from his calm!     As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap,     Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warm     As wildwood rose, and filled the air with balm     Of his sweet breath as with ethereal sap. II     Does not the moss retain some vague impress,     Green dented in, of where he lay or trod?     Do not the flow'rs, so reticent, confess     With conscious looks the contact of a god?     Does not the very water garrulously     Boast the indulgence of a deity?     And, hark! in burly beech and sycamore     How all the birds proclaim it! and the leaves     Rejoice with clappings of their myriad hands!     And shall not I believe, too, and adore,     With such wide proof?--Yea, though my soul perceives     No evident presence, still it understands. III     And for a while it moves me to lie down     Here on the spot his god-head sanctified:     Mayhap some dream he dreamed may lingert brown     And young as joy, around the forestside;     Some dream within whose heart lives no disdain     For such as I whose love is sweet and sane;     That may repeat, so none but I may hear--     As one might tell a pearl-strung rosary--     Some epic that the trees have learned to croon,     Some lyric whispered in the wild-flower's ear,     Whose murmurous lines are sung by bird and bee,     And all the insects of the night and noon. IV     For, all around me, upon field and hill,     Enchantment lies as of mysterious flutes;     As if the music of a god's good-will     Had taken on material attributes     In blooms, like chords; and in the water-gleam,     That runs its silvery scales from stream to stream;     In sunbeam bars, up which the butterfly,     A golden note, vibrates then flutters on--     Inaudible tunes, blown on the pipes of Pan,     That have assumed a visible entity,     And drugged the air with beauty so, a Faun,     Behold, I seem, and am no more a man.