They lean their faces to me through
Green windows of the woods;
Their cool throats sweet with honey-dew
Beneath their leafy hoods—
No dream they dream but hath been true
Here in the solitudes.
Star trillium, in the underbrush,
In whom Spring bares her face;
Sun eglantine, that breathes the blush
Of Summer’s quiet grace;
Moon mallow, in whom lives the hush
Of Autumn’s tragic pace.
This one hath heard the dryad’s sighs
Behind the covering bark;
That one hath felt the satyr’s eyes
Gleam through the bosky dark;
And one hath seen the Naiad rise
In waters all a-spark.
I bend my soul unto them, stilled
In worship man hath lost:—
The old-world myths that science killed
Are living things almost
To me through these whose forms are filled
With Beauty’s pagan ghost.
And with new eyes I seem to see
The world these live within,—
A shuttered world of mystery,
Where unreal forms begin
Real forms of ideality
That have no unreal kin.