Once, ages past, there lived a man who knew
The spirits of the wind and wood and wave:
Felt in the breeze a wandering caress
From some cool-fingered presence, passing on;
Knew in the tree's heart, shapely Dryads hid -
Dryads, with eyes wood-dusky, and massed hair
Like reddened shadows cureved under pines,
Late-warmed by the sun's far farewell ray; their flesh
Was as the tinted woodland flowers he loved.
And in the liquid lilt of glinting brook
Over white sands its sunlit ripples tossing,
He saw the young, and laughing river-children.
But when it pleased the gods that he should die,
Came Dian, in the first dread whiteness of stern dawn.
Grave Dian, huntress over morning hills.
Most unlike them, children of wave and wood,
Who, startled, dart like wind-rushed leaves away!
Far-eyed, serene, the eternal goddess stands,
In silence. And he knew then at the last,
That Truth is like the enduring noble sun,
And all he loved, but as the wavering maze
Of sun and shadow, sifted through quick leaves;
Only a mocking, fitful, errant light,
Glancing fantastic over braided waters.
But, for men look not on the gods and live,
There is no word of his, concerning Truth.