Explore "A Character" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ He lived beyond us and we stood / As pygmies to his every mood, / Mere pupils at his beck and nod, / That spoke the influence of a god. / And oft we wondered, when his thought / Made our humanity seem naught, / If he, like Uther's mystic son, / Were not a birth for Avalon.
/ When wand'ring 'neath the sighing trees, / His soul waxed genial with the breeze, / That, voiceful, from the piney glades / Companioned seemed of Oreads; / A Dryad life lived in each oak, / And with its many leaf-tongues spoke, / Glorying the deity whose power / Gave it its life in sun and shower. / By every violet-hallowed brook, / Where every bramble-matted nook / Rippled and laughed with water-sounds, / He walked as one on sainted grounds, / Fearing intrusion on the spell / That kept some fountain-spirit's well, / Or woodland genius sitting where / Brown racy berries kissed his hair.