THE WATERNYMPH AND THE BOY.
LIVE in the heart of a limpid pool, In the living limpid heart of a pool: I lie in a flow of crystalline,
Where silvery fish with jewelled eyne
Float silent, and the ripple-gleam
With many a delicate water-dream
Moves the face of flowers to quaver,
Hanging where the wavelets waver;
Daffodil, hyacinth, spring flowers,
Who slumber veiled from sunny showers,
That only trickle feebly through
Forest foliage from the blue.
My streamlet sparkles in the pines,
And here in lambent flame declines;
For the sun has burst his leafy thrall,
Kissing it passionate in the fall.
I love to feel the water plash
Merrily into my pool,
With a swift reverberating flash
Of soft foam beautiful.
One brilliant surface shrines the sky,
Another young lit leaves on high,
While yet another shadowed o'er,
Below deep emerald, my floor
Reveals, all wavering below
My water's everlasting flow.
O the beautiful butterflies
That flutter where the runnel flies!
Silverly glistening over stones
Where yonder nightingale intones,
Where he flutes the livelong day,
Learning the water's liquid lay;
A lovelier rendering is heard
Fresh from the genius of a bird;
While emulous water vainly tries
To glisten like the glistening eyes
Of nightingales in vernal leaves,
Where yon rosebower softly heaves:
Soon will their mellifluent strain
Woo the rose to life again!
But surely there are lovelier things
Than these are with their cinnamon wings! Whose grace hath more compelling spells Than all mine azure damozels!
For as I lay in my pool one day,
A cloud released a gleam,
And the jewel heart of my home grew gay
With a glorifying beam.
There came a rustle in the trees:
I deemed a silver doe
Would sip the ripple of the breeze,
Wandering to and fro;
Listless I watched until he should
Arrive here from the shadowy wood.
It was no deer; it was a boy
Assailed and took my heart with joy!
Stealthily, daintily, he came,
Flooding all my sense with flame.
He was clad in a ruby dress,
That clung to his breathing loveliness,
While hose of opalescent silk
Revealed his delicate limbs of milk.
Shyly, timid as a doe,
He glanced if aught were near or no,
Then sought him out a pleasant spot
With clustering forget-me-not,
And leisurely upon the brink,
His jewelled raiment to unlink
Began; that yielding made a way
For hungering eyes of mine to stray
In his fair bosom, velvet fine
Flushing it warmly as with wine,
Velvet and cambric lingering loth
To leave him, yet to faintness both
With warm white satiate, from whence
Stole overpowering my sense
Smooth boy-bosom, whose are twin
Rosebuds in a silky skin.
By slender fingers, where the pale
Moon rises in a rosy nail,
Cleared from all the lordly dress,
He shone with native loveliness!
Then pressed the grass with shrinking foot, Strawberry blooms that promise fruit,
Windflower, violet and moss,
And taller flowers that love the loss
Of all their living gold upon
Those limbs unheeding any one:
As he long blades of grassy gloss
Perplexed daintily disjoins,
A locust leaps upon his loins!
Now finding near a shelving rock,
Behold! he cowers before the shock;
Yet heated how he longs to lave
His beauty in my cooling wave!
His rounded ivory arms have met
Over locks of glossy jet:
Gracefully curls the form so fair
Now upon my yielding air;
Cleaves my laughter-flashing wave,
Delighted one so soft and suave
To gulf within her glassy grave.
Lo! many a clear aerial bubble
Tells the water-heart's sweet trouble!
He lips the ripple, pants and flushes,
Thrusts out white buoyant limbs, and pushes
With turning palm, a snowy swan
Lavishing his bosom upon
My mantling water in the sun!
Now hath he climbed beside the stone,
With filmy lichen overgrown,
Where small swift globes of water twinkle :
There among the periwinkle
Creeping, sidles with a shoulder
Pressed upon the verdured boulder,
Along a narrow ledge, to wet
His shining head within the jet
Of foam that skirts my clear cascade,
Leaning under, half-afraid.
All my close-clinging vision grew
Over him leaping forth anew:
He dives; he rises; I refrain:
He floats upon the shine again.
Luxuriant he lies afloat,
Half his form, and half his throat,
Clear from crystalline that sways
Him gently, with alluring haze
Veiling some of him from sight,
Filming less or more of white
Wrist or shoulder, as he moves
Fair on wavering water-groves,
Hearing a sweet long croon of doves.
Flying pansies, butterflies,
Moths aflame with crimson dyes,
Haunt his vague and violet eyes:
Odorous shadow of the trees,
Drowsy with a drone of bees,
Amorous nightingales enkindling
At intervals the air and dwindling,
Slim grey waterfall in plashing,
On my stone the wave in washing,
Sweetest music never ending,
Blending, never-ending,
Lulls him in his water-wending.
Am singing now thy lullaby!
Hear my water sing thee now
A lullaby!
In thy jasmine throat meander
Tender lines of dimple,
And 'tis haunted where they wander,
While the waters wimple,
With a shy blue as from veins,
Where soft throat subsiding wanes
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