Poem by Louise Imogen Guiney

Hylas

JAR in arm, they bade him rove
Thro’ the alder’s long alcove,
Where the hid spring musically
Gushes to the ample valley.
(There ’s a bird on the under bough
Fluting evermore and now:
“Keep--young!” but who knows how?)

Down the woodland corridor,
Odors deepened more and more;
Blossomed dogwood, in the briers,
Struck her faint delicious fires;
Miles of April passed between
Crevices of closing green,
And the moth, the violet-lover,
By the wellside saw him hover.

Ah, the slippery sylvan dark!
Never after shall he mark
Noisy ploughmen drinking, drinking,
On his drownèd cheek down-sinking;
Quit of serving is that wild,
Absent, and bewitchèd child,
Unto action, age, and danger,
Thrice a thousand years a stranger.

Fathoms low, the naiads sing
In a birthday welcoming;
Water-white their breasts, and o’er him,
Water-gray, their eyes adore him.
(There ’s a bird on the under bough
Fluting evermore and now:
“Keep--young!” but who knows how?)

1. The Still of the Year
2. The Japanese Anemone
3. Sherman: “An Horatian Ode”
4. Saint Florent-le-Vieil
5. T. W. P. 1819-1892

Madison Cawein Hylas ("The cuckoo-sorrel paints with pink")

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