I oft have met her slowly wandering Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild, Her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than Spring, As if on her the sumach copse had smiled. Or I have seen her sitting, tall and brown,— Her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,— Beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves She wound great drowsy wreaths and cast them down; The west-wind in her hair, that made it swim Far out behind, deep as the rustling sheaves. Or in the hill-lands I have often seen The marvel of her passage; glimpses faint Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint. Or I have met her 'twixt two beechen hills, Within a dingled valley near a fall, Held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower; Or wading dimly where the leaf-dammed rills Went babbling through the wildwood's arrased hall, Where burned the beech and maples glared their power. Or I have met her by some ruined mill, Where trailed the crimson creeper, serpentine, On fallen leaves that stirred and rustled chill, And watched her swinging in the wild-grape vine. More sad than death, or all that death can teach, Dreamed of decay and stretched appealing arms, Where splashed the murmur of the forest's fountains; With all her loveliness did she beseech, And all the sorrow of her wildwood charms. Once only in a hollow, girt with trees, A-dream amid wild asters filled with rain, I glimpsed her cheeks red-berried by the breeze, In her dark eyes the night's sidereal stain. And once upon an orchard's tangled path, Where all the golden-rod had turned to brown, I have beheld her 'mid her aftermath Of blossoms standing, in her gypsy gown, Within her gaze the deeps of life and death. |