The Old Road to Paradise/The Faun's Sweetheart
THE FAUN'S SWEETHEART
We met by the Wood of Doom, Day gone and the dusk come after . . . And I thought you were one like the lads anear, Only more glad and fair, Till I heard you laugh in the gloom And I knew a faun's wild laughter—But oh, it was all too late to fear The little horns in your hair!
Far back leaped the woodlights' glow, And you fled—and I might not follow, And I loosed the hold of your hurrying hand At the piercing wood-flutes' call; For my human feet fell slow, Flagging at hill and hollow, Till far rang back from the leaping band The click of your light footfall. ······The days pass long and still Where I sit still at my spinning . . . But I wish the sounds of the talking stream Would hush, and I might not know Over the forest-hill The sounds of the night's beginning, Nor see the flit of the hurrying gleam Where the lightfoot woodfolk go!
For I cannot have hope in heaven To quiet my heartache after, Because you were only a faun o' the wood With never a soul at all. And never the hills of heaven May echo a faun's wild laughter Nor over the harpstrings' holy flood Sound ringing your light footfall!