Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/104

 Took the path against Peneus, panted by its yellow banks;

Turned, and looked, and flew the faster through grey-tufted thicket ranks;

Flashed amongst high flowered sedges: leaped across the brook, and ran

Down to where the fourfold shadows of a nether glade began;

There she dropped, like falling Hesper, heavy hair of radiant head

Hiding all the young abundance of her beauty's white and red.

Came the yellow-tressed Far-darter—came the god whose feet are fire,

On his lips the name of Daphne, in his eyes a great desire;

Fond, full lips of lord and lover, sad because of suit denied;

Clear, grey eyes made keen by passion, panting, pained, unsatisfied.

Here he turned, and there he halted, now he paused, and now he flew,

Swifter than his sister's arrows, through soft dells of dreamy dew.

Vext with gleams of Ladon's daughter, dashed along the son of Jove,

Fast upon flower-trammelled Daphne fleeting on from grove to grove;

Flights of seawind hard behind him, breaths of bleak and whistling straits;

Drifts of driving cloud above him, like a troop of fierce-eyed Fates!

So he reached the water-shallows; then he stayed his steps, and heard

Daphne drop upon the grasses, fluttering like a wounded bird.

Was there help for Ladon's daughter? Saturn's son is high and just:

Did he come between her beauty and the fierce Far-darter's lust?

As she lay, the helpless maiden, caught and bound in fast eclipse,

Did the lips of god drain pleasure from her sweet and swooning lips?

Now that these and all Love's treasures blushed, before the spoiler, bare,

Was the wrong that shall be nameless done, and seen, and suffered there?