MUSCADINES by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

SOBER September, robed in gray and dun,
Smiled from the forest in half-pensive wise;
A misty sweetness shone in her mild eyes,
And on her cheek a shy flush went and came,
As flashing warm between
The autumnal leaves of slowly dying green,
The sovereign sun
Tenderly kissed her; then (in ruthful mood
For the vague fears of modest maidenhood)
Behold him gently, lovingly retire;
Beneath the foliaged screen,
Veiling his swift desire --
Even as a king, wed to some virgin queen,
Might doom his sight to blissful, brief eclipse,
After his tender lips
Had touched the maiden's trembling soul to flame.

Through shine and shade,
Thoughtful I trod the tranquil forest glade,
Up-glancing oft
To watch the rainless cloudlets, white and soft,
Sail o'er the placid ocean of the sky.
The breeze was like a sleeping infant's sigh,
Measured and low, or, in quick, palpitant thrills
An instant swept the sylvan depths apart
To pass and die
Far off, far off, within the shrouded heart
Of immemorial hills,

Through shade and shine
I wandered, as one wanders in a dream,
Till, near the borders of a beauteous stream
O'erhung by flower and vine,
I pushed the dense, perplexing boughs aside,
To mark the temperate tide
Purpled by shadows of the Muscadine.

Reclining there at languid length I sank,
One idle hand outstretched beyond the bank,
With careless grasp
The sumptuous globes of these rare grapes to clasp.
Ah! how the ripened wild fruit of the South
Melted upon my mouth!
Its magic juices through each captured vein
Rose to the yielding brain,
Till, like the hero of an old romance,
Caught by the fays, my spirit lapsed away,
Lost to the sights and sounds of mortal day.

Lost to all earthly sights and sounds was I,
But blithesomely,
As stirred by some new being's wondrous dawn,
I heard about me, swift though gently drawn,
The footsteps of light creatures on the grass.
Mine eyelids seemed to open, and I saw,
With joyance checked by awe,
A multitudinous company
Of such strange forms and faces, quaint, or bright
With true Elysian light,
As once in fairy fantasies of eld
High-hearted poets through the wilds beheld
Of shadowy dales and lone sea beaches pass,
At spring-tide morn or holy hush of night.

Then to an airy measure,
Low as the sea winds when the night at noon
Clasps the frail beauty of an April moon,
Through woven paces at soft-circling leisure,
They glided with elusive grace adown
The forest coverts -- all live woodland things,
Black-eyed or brown,
Firm-footed or up-poised on changeful wings,
Glinting about them 'mid the indolent motion
Of billowy verdures rippling slow
As the long, languid underflow
Of some star-tranced, voluptuous Southern ocean.

The circle widened, and as flower-wrought bands,
Stretched by incautious hands,
Break in the midst with noiseless wrench asunder,
So brake the dancers now to form in line
Down the deep glade -- above the shifting lights,
Through massive tree-boles, on majestic heights;
The blossoming turf thereunder,
Whence, fair and fine,
Twinkling like stars that hasten to be drawn
Close to the breast of dawn,
Shone, with their blue veins pulsing fleet,
Innumerable feet,
White as the splendors of the milky way,
Yet rosy warm as opening tropic day,
With lithe, free limbs of curvature divine,
And dazzling bosoms of unveiled glow,
Save where the long, ethereal tresses stray
Across their unimaginable snow.

One after one,
By sun-rays kissed or fugitive shades o'errun,
All vision-like they passed me. First there came
A Dryad coy, her sweet head bowed in shame,
And o'er her neck and half-averted face
The faintest delicate trace
Of the charmed life-blood pulsing softly pure.
Next, with bold footsteps, sure,
And proudly set, from her untrammelled hills,
Fair-haired, blue-eyed, upon her lofty head
A fragrant crown of leaves, purple and red,
Chanting a lay clear as the mountain rills,
A frank-faced Oread turned on me
Her cloudless glances, laughter-lit and free
As the large gestures and the liberal air
With which I viewed her fare
Down the lone valley land, --
Pausing betimes to wave her happy hand
As in farewell; but ere her presence died Wholly away,
Her voice of golden swell
Breathed also a farewell.
Farewell, farewell, the sylvan echoes sighed,
From rock-bound summit to rich blossoming bay --
Farewell, farewell!

Fauns, satyrs flitted past me -- the whole race
Of woodland births uncouth --
Until I seemed, in sooth,
Far from the garish track
Of these loud days to have wandered, joyful, back
Along the paths, beneath the crystal sky
Of long, long-perished Arcady.
But last of all, filling the haunted space
With odors of the flower-enamored tide,
Whose wavelets love through many a secret place
Of the deep dell and breezeless bosk to glide,
Stole by, lightsome and slim
As Dian's self in each swift, sinuous limb,
Her arms outstretched, as if in act to swim
The air, as erst the waters of her home,
A naiad, sparkling as the fleckless foam
Of the cool fountain-head whereby she dwells.

O'er her sloped shoulders and the pure pink bud
Of either virginal breast is richly rolled
(O rare, miraculous flood!)
The torrent of her freed locks' shimmering gold,
Through which the gleams of rainbow-colored shells,
And pearls of moon-like radiance flash and float
Round her immaculate throat.

Clothed in her beauty only wandered she,
'Mid the moist herbage to the streamlet's edge,
Where, girt by silvery rushes and brown sedge,
She faded slowly, slowly, as a star
Fades in the gloaming, on the bosom bowed
Of some half-luminous cloud,
Above the wan, waste waters of the sea.

Then, sense and spirit fading in ward too,
I slept oblivious; through the dim, dumb hours,
Safely encouched on autumn leaves and flowers,
I slept as sleep the unperturbed dead.
At length the wind of evening, keenly chill,
Swept round the darkening hill;
Then throbbed the rush of hurried wings o'erhead,
Blent with aerial murmurs of the pine,
Just whispering twilight. On my brow the dew
Dropped softly, and I woke to all the low,
Strange sounds of twilight woods that come and go
So fitfully; and o'er the sun's decline,
Through the green foliage flickering high,
Beheld, with dreamy eye,
Sweet Venus glittering in the stainless blue.
. . . . .
Thus the day closed whereon I drank the wine --
The liquid magic of the Muscadine.

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