That screens from the sun the floor of the steep still wood,

Deep, silent, splendid, and perfect and calm as time,

Stand fast as ever in sight of the night they stood,

When night gave all that moonlight and dewfall could.

The dense ferns deepen, the moss glows warm as the thyme:

The wild heath quivers about me: the world is good.

[Pg 131]

Is it Pan's breath, fierce in the tremulous maidenhair,

That bids fear creep as a snake through the woodlands, felt

In the leaves that it stirs not yet, in the mute bright air,

In the stress of the sun? For here has the great God dwelt:

For hence were the shafts of his love or his anger dealt.

For here has his wrath been fierce as his love was fair,

When each was as fire to the darkness its breath bade melt.

Is it love, is it dread, that enkindles the trembling noon,

That yearns, reluctant in rapture that fear has fed,

As man for woman, as woman for man? Full soon,

If I live, and the life that may look on him drop not dead,

Shall the ear that hears not a leaf quake hear his tread,

The sense that knows not the sound of the deep day's tune

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