Classic Poem

It was a haunted youth; he spake
Beneath the beechen shade:
" An' hast thou seen my love go past,
A sunny, winsome maid?

" An' hast thou seen my love fare past,
Her face with life aflame?
The leaves astir her footsteps tell,
The soft winds blow her name.

" 'Twas when the autumn days were still, —
It seemeth but an hour, —
I met her on the gold hillside
When elfin loves had power.

" Her voice was like the sound of brooks,
Her face like some wild bloom;
And in the beauty of her look
I read mine ancient doom.

" And when the world in mist died out
Down toward some evening land,
Betwixt the glinting golden-rod
We two went hand in hand.

" And when the moon a golden disk
Above the night hills came,
Down in a world of midnight haze
I kissed her lips aflame.

" But when the moon was hidden low
Behind each spectre tree;
She loosed from my sad arms and bent
A startled look on me.

" (While wound from out some haunted dusk
A far-off elfin horn,)
Like one on sudden woke from sleep,
And fled into the morn.

" I follow her, I follow her,
But never more may see.
The crimson dawn, the stars of night
Know what she is to me.

" I ne'er can rest, I ne'er can stay,
But speed from place to place;
For all my heart is flamed with that
Wild glamor of her face.

" I know her soft arms in my dreams,
All wound about my sleep;
I seem to hear her silvern voice
In all the winds that creep.

" O saw you not her come this way,
By boughs in waters glassed?
So slight her form, so soft her step
You'd think a moon ray passed.

" O tell me did you see her wend?
And whence to hill or sea?
The ruddy dawn, the stars of night,
Know what she is to me. "