Explore "Myth and Romance" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I. When I go forth to greet the glad-faced Spring, / Just at the time of opening apple-buds, / When brooks are laughing, winds are whispering, / On babbling hillsides or in warbling woods, / There is an unseen presence that eludes: -- / Perhaps a Dryad, in whose tresses cling / The loamy odors of old solitudes, / Who, from her beechen doorway, calls; and leads / My soul to follow; now with dimpling words / Of leaves; and now with syllables of birds; / While here and there -- is it her limbs that swing? / Or restless sunlight on the moss and weeds?
II. Or, haply, 't is a Naiad now who slips, / Like some white lily, from her fountain's glass, / While from her dripping hair and breasts and hips, / The moisture rains cool music on the grass. / Her have I heard and followed, yet, alas! / Have seen no more than the wet ray that dips / The shivered waters, wrinkling where I pass; / But, in the liquid light, where she doth hide, / I have beheld the azure of her gaze / Smiling; and, where the orbing ripple plays, / Among her minnows I have heard her lips, / Bubbling, make merry by the waterside.