Doubt No More That Oberon

        Doubt no more that Oberon--
        Never doubt that Pan
        Lived, and played a reed, and ran
        After nymphs in a dark forest,
        In the merry, credulous days,--
        Lived, and led a fairy band
        Over the indulgent land!
        Ah, for in this dourest, sorest
        Age man's eye has looked upon,
        Death to fauns and death to fays,
        Still the dog-wood dares to raise--
        Healthy tree, with trunk and root--
        Ivory bowls that bear no fruit,
        And the starlings and the jays--
        Birds that cannot even sing--
        Dare to come again in spring!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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Edna St. Vincent Millay

Exiled

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

The Singing-Woman from the Wood's Edge

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Sonnet I

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Travel

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

English

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The Faun. A Fragment.

I will go out to grass with that old King,
For I am weary of clothes and cooks.
I long to lie along the banks of brooks,
And watch the boughs above me sway and swing.
Come, I will pluck off custom's livery,
Nor longer be a lackey to old Time.
Time shall serve me, and at my feet shall fling
The spoil of listless minutes. I shall climb
The wild trees for my food, and run
Through dale and upland as a fox runs free,
Laugh for cool joy and sleep i' the warm sun,
And men will call me mad, like that old King.

For I am woodland-natured, and have made
Dryads my bedfellows,
And I have played
With the sleek Naiads in the splash of pools
And made a mock of gowned and trousered fools.
Helen, none knows
Better than thou how like a Faun I strayed.
And I ...

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Sonnets V

        Once more into my arid days like dew,
        Like wind from an oasis, or the sound
        Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,
        A treacherous messenger, the thought of you
        Comes to destroy me; once more I renew
        Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found
        Long since to be but just one other mound
        Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.
        And once again, and wiser in no wise,
        I chase your colored phantom on the air,
        And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise
        And stumble pitifully on to where,
        Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,
        Once more I clasp,--and there is nothing there.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Faun

    Yesterday I thought to roam
    Idly through the fields of home,
    And I came at morning's end
    To our brook's familiar bend.
    There I raised my eyes, and there,
    Shining through an ampler air,
    Folded in by hills of blue
    Such as Wessex never knew,
    Changed as in a waking dream
    Flowed the well-remembered stream.

    Now a line of wattled pale
    Fenced the downland from the vale,
    Now the sedge was set with reeds
    Fitter for Arcadian meads,
    And where I was wont to find
    Only things of timid kind,
    Now the Genius of the pool
    Mocked me from his corner cool.
    Eyes he had with malice quick,
    Tufted hair and ears a-prick,
    And, above a tiny chin,
    Lips with laughter wide a-...

Henry John Newbolt

Wood Myths

Sylvan, they say, and nymph are gone;
And yet I saw the two last night,
When overhead the moon sailed white,
And through the mists, her light made wan,
Each bush and tree doffed its disguise,
And stood revealed to mortal eyes.

The hollow, rimmed with rocks and trees,
And massed with ferns and matted vines,
Seemed an arena mid the pines,
A theatre of mysteries,
Where oread and satyr met,
And all the myths that men forget.

The rain and frost had carved the rocks
With faces that were wild and strange,
Which Protean fancy seemed to change
Each moment in the granite blocks,
That seemed slow dreaming into form
The gods grotesque of wind and storm.

Then suddenly Diana stood,
Slim as a shaft of moonlight, there,
Immortalizing eart...

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Faerie.

From the oped lattice glance once more abroad
While the ethereal moontide bathes with light
Hill, stream, and garden, and white-winding road.


All gracious myths born of the shadowy night
Recur, and hover in fantastic guise,
Airy and vague, before the drowsy sight.


On yonder soft gray hill Endymion lies
In rosy slumber, and the moonlit air
Breathes kisses on his cheeks and lips and eyes.


'Twixt bush and bush gleam flower-white limbs, left bare,
Of huntress-nymphs, and flying raiment thin,
Vanishing faces, and bright floating hair.


The quaint midsummer fairies and their kin,
Gnomes, elves, and trolls, on blossom, branch, and grass
Gambol and dance, and winding out and in


Leave circles of spun dew where'er th...

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The Cuckoo Wood

Cuckoo, are you calling me,
Or is it a voice of wizardry?
In these woodlands I am lost,
From glade to glade of flowers tost.
Seven times I held my way,
And seven times the voice did say,
Cuckoo! Cuckoo! No man could
Issue from this underwood,
Half of green and half of brown,
Unless he laid his senses down.
Only let him chance to see
The snows of the anemone
Heaped above its greenery;
Cuckoo! Cuckoo! No man could
Issue from the master wood.

Magic paths there are that cross;
Some beset with jewelled moss
And boughs all bare; where others run,
Bluebells bathe in mist and sun
Past a clearing filled with clumps
Of primrose round the nutwood stumps;
All as gay as gay can be,
And bordered with dog-mercury,
The wizard flower, t...

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