English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. Elusion. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.

Madison Julius Cawein (Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн)

Elusion

I.

My soul goes out to her who says,
"Come, follow me and cast off care!"
Then tosses back her sun-bright hair,
And like a flower before me sways
Between the green leaves and my gaze:
This creature like a girl, who smiles
Into my eyes and softly lays
Her hand in mine and leads me miles,
Long miles of haunted forest ways.

II.

Sometimes she seems a faint perfume,
A fragrance that a flower exhaled
And God gave form to; now, unveiled,
A sunbeam making gold the gloom
Of vines that roof some woodland room
Of boughs; and now the silvery sound
Of streams her presence doth assume
Music, from which, in dreaming drowned,
A crystal shape she seems to bloom.

III.

Sometimes she seems the light that lies
On foam of waters where the fern,
Shimmers and drips; now, at some turn
Of woodland, bright against the skies,
She seems the rainbowed mist that flies;
And now the mossy fire that breaks
Beneath the feet in azure eyes
Of flowers; now the wind that shakes
Pale petals from the bough that sighs.

IV.

Sometimes she lures me with a song;
Sometimes she guides me with a laugh;
Her white hand is a magic staff,
Her look a spell to lead me long:
Though she be weak and I be strong,
She needs but shake her happy hair,
But glance her eyes, and, right or wrong,
My soul must follow anywhere
She wills far from the world's loud throng.

V.

Sometimes I think that she must be
No part of earth, but merely this
The fair, elusive thing we miss
In Nature, that we dream we see
Yet never see: that goldenly
Beckons; that, limbed with rose and pearl,
The Greek made a divinity:
A nymph, a god, a glimmering girl,
That haunts the forest's mystery.

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