--
Home of the red Auroras and the gods!
He who profanes thy perilous threshold,--where
The ancient centuries lair,
And, glacier-throned, thy monarch, Winter, nods,--
Let him beware!
Lest, coming on that hoary presence there,
Whose pitiless hand,
Above that hungry land,
An iceberg wields as sceptre, and whose crown
The North Star is, set in a band of frost,
He, too, shall feel the bitterness of that frown,
And, turned to stone, forevermore be lost.
_Dionysia_
The day is dead; and in the west
The slender crescent of the moon--
Diana's crystal-kindled crest--
Sinks hillward in a silvery swoon.
What is the murmur in the dell?
The stealthy whisper and the drip?--
A Dryad with her leaf-light trip?
Or Naiad o'er her fountain well?--
Who, with white fingers for her comb,
Sleeks her blue hair, and from its curls
Showers slim minnows and pale pearls,
And hollow music of the foam.
What is it in the vistaed ways
That leans and springs, and stoops and sways?--
The naked limbs of one who flees?
An Oread who hesitates
Before the Satyr form that waits,
Crouching to leap, that there she sees?
Or under boughs, reclining cool,
A Hamadryad, like a pool
Of moonlight, palely beautiful?
Or Limnad, with her lilied face,
More lovely than the misty lace
That haunts a star and gives it grace?
Or is it some Leimoniad,
In wildwood flowers dimly clad?
Oblong blossoms white as froth;
Or mottled like the tiger-moth;
Or brindled as the brows of death;
Wild of hue and wild of breath.
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