Classic Poem

Through the green woods the fair morning light
Flashed in a rain of shattered beams;
Like a frightened thief the swift-winged night
Fled from the skies with her booty of dreams.

The lucid air of the jocund woods,
The sense of freedom that filled the green space,
The unseen joys that in numberless broods
Peopled the dryad-haunted place,

Awoke in the heart of the hunter bold
The keen desire to follow the game,
And fathom the secret old legends told
Of a stag that had put all hunters to shame.

He threw his quiver on his shoulder fair,
He seized his bow in his sinewy hand,
He called to his hounds with a lordly air,
And felt his breast with his joy expand.

Through the softly-lighted hush of the wood,
Through the dew-drop's quickly-extinguished shine,
He passed till his lingering footsteps stood
Before a thicket where the roses' twine

And the envious boughs concealed from sight
The silver expanse of the secret lake,
Save that sudden gleams like a snow of light
Burned through the leaf-spaces, fierce flake on flake.

Over his head the sky was blue,
Around him sounded no living voice;
As he waiting stood the silence grew
As of one who had lost the power to rejoice.

He knew that the mystery's heart lay bare
Beyond the green wall's thick-woven screen;
He breathed the entrancéd deep-scented air,
He halted with troubled and doubtful mien.

A brooding wonder encircled the spot,
A breathing fear as though one stood
On the verge of the universe, and caught
A glimpse of the high God's solitude.

His hounds lay crouched in the knee-high grass,
They quivered and crept to their master's feet;
He trembled and longed and trembled to pass,
And heard the musical waters beat.

With a passionate cry he sundered in twain
The hateful leaves that impeded his sight,
And stood transfixed to the spot in pain
Of a bliss that flooded his soul with light.

Like a statue cut from the moonbeams pale,
Frozen in all their luminousness,
The goddess stood devoid of veil
Or garment saving the windy distress

Of her golden hair, that with lambent shine
Circled her body, and lit with fire
The waters under, where the shadow-leaves twine
Round her pallid shadow as if sick with desire.

And like lilies that rise on a burnished lake,
The white-armed maidens, where fancy willed,
Floated, and laughed for Diana's sake,
As their hollowed palms the water spilled.

Then the goddess turned her cruel pure eyes
On the bold intruder in a passion of scorn,
And smote with the sword of her grand surprise
His body through, and his spirit forlorn

Dissevered his loosened limbs' control,
And shivered the bonds that held him to earth,
As an oak is uptorn when the wind twists the whole
Of its might round the manifold-ringéd girth.

Like remorseful thoughts that, wakened from sleep,
Turn on the soul, his maddened hounds
Leaped on their master, and, baying deep,
Filled with their din the wood's wide bounds.

Deep silence fell on the terrible place,
Deep silence and darkness of terrible death
On the man who had dared to defile the space
Where the goddess dwelt with unsanctified breath.