Hylas

The cuckoo-sorrel paints with pink     The green page of the meadow-land     Around a pool where thrushes drink     As from a hollowed hand.     A hill, long-haired with leathered grass     Combed by the strong incessant wind,     Looks down upon the pool's pale glass     Like some old hag gone blind,     And on a forest grey of beech,     Reserved, mysterious, deep and wild,     That whispers to itself; its speech     Like some old man's turned child.     A forest, through which something speaks     Authoritative things to man,     A something that o'erawed the Greeks,     The universal Pan.     And through the forest falls a stream     Babbling of immemorial things     The myth, that haunts it like a dream,     The god, that in it sings.     And here it was, when I was young,     Across this meadow, sorrel-stained,     To this green place where willows wrung     Wild hands, and beech-trees strained     Their mighty strength with winds of spring,     That clutched and tore the wild-witch hair     Of yon gaunt hill, I heard them sing,     The hylas hidden there.     The slant gale played soft fugues of rain,     With interludes of sun between,     Where windflowers wove a twinkling chain     Through mosses grey and green.     From every coign of woodland peered     The starry eyes of Loveliness,     As reticently now she neared     Or stood in shy distress.     Then I remembered all the past     The ancient ships, the unknown seas;     And him, like some huge, knotted mast,     My master Herakles.     Again I saw the port, the wood     Of Cyzicus; the landing there;     The pool among the reeds; and, nude,     The nymphs with long green hair,     That swarmed to clasp me when I stooped     To that grey pool as clear as glass,     And round my body wrapped and looped     Their hair, like water-grass.     Hylas, the Argonaut, the lad     Beloved of Herakles, was I     Again with joy my heart grew sad,     Dreaming on days gone by.     Again I felt the drowning pain,     The kiss that slew me long ago;     The dripping arms drew down again,     And love cried all its woe.     The new world vanished! 'Twas the old.     Once more I knew the Mysian shore,     The haunted pool, the wood, the cold     Wild wind from sea and moor.     And then a voice went by; 'twas his,     The Demigod's who sought me: but     Cold mouths had closed mine with a kiss     And both mine eyes were shut....     And had the hylas ceased to sing?     Or what? For, lo! I stood again     Between the hill and wood; and Spring     Gazed at me through the rain.     And in her gaze I seemed to see     This was a dream she'd dreamed, not I;     A figment of a memory     That I had felt go by.