Explore "Artemis to Actaeon" by Edith Wharton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THOU couldst not look on me and live: so runs / The mortal legend -- thou that couldst not live / Nor look on me (so the divine decree)! / That saw'st me in the cloud, the wave, the bough, / The clod commoved with April, and the shapes / Lurking 'twixt lid and eye-ball in the dark.
Mocked I thee not in every guise of life, / Hid in girls' eyes, a naiad in her well, / Wooed through their laughter, and like echo fled, / Luring thee down the primal silences / Where the heart hushes and the flesh is dumb? / Nay, was not I the tide that drew thee out / Relentlessly from the detaining shore, / Forth from the home-lights and the hailing voices, / Forth from the last faint headland's failing line, / Till I enveloped thee from verge to verge / And hid thee in the hollow of my being? / And still, because between us hung the veil, / The myriad-tinted veil of sense, thy feet / Refused their rest, thy hands the gifts of life, / Thy heart its losses, lest some lesser face / Should blur mine image in thine upturned soul / Ere death had stamped it there. This was thy thought.