The Haunted Woodland.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1, 6 January 1906, Page 42

The Haunted Woodland.

BY MADISON CAWEIN. My soul goes out to her who says. ‘‘Come, follow me, and cast off care!” Thon tosses back b?r sunbright hair. And like a flower before me sways Between the green leaves and my gaze: This creature like a girl, who smiles Into my eyes and sof i ’y lays Her hand in mine and loads me miles# Doug miles cf haunted forest w■ • Sometimes she seems a faint perfume. A fragrance that a flower exhaled And God gave form tc: now. unveiled, A sunbeam making gold the cioom Of vines that roof some woodbind room Of boughs: and now the silvery sound Of streams her presence doth assume— Music, from which, in dreaming drowned, A crystal shadow she seems to bloom. Sometimes she seems the light that lies On foam of waters, where the fern .Shimmers and drips; now. at some torn Of woodland, hrizht against the skies. She sems the r Unbowed mist that flics; And n nr th? mr"?*-y fire that breaks the f ‘ t ip azure eyes Of fl wers; ard nw the wind that shakes Talc petals from the bough that sighs. Sometimes she lures me with a song; Sometimes she sn’kles mo with a laugh: Her white hand is a maeic staff. Iler look a spell to lead mo long: 'i"hough she be weak and I be strong, She needs but shake her happy hair. But glance her eyes, and, right or wrong, My soul must follow — anywhere She wills — far from the world's wild throng.

Sometimes I think that she must be No part of earth, but merely this— The fair, elusive thing we miss In Nature; that we dream we see. Yet never see; that goldenly Beckons; that, limbed with rose and pearl, The Greek made a divinity— A nymph, a god. a glimmering girl. That baunU the forest’s mystery.