The Nympholept

There was a boy - not above childish fears -     With steps that faltered now and straining ears,     Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still,     Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hill     Stood sharp and clear in Heaven's unclouded blue     And all Earth shimmered with fresh-beaded dew,     Risen in the first beams of the gladdening sun,     Walked up into the mountains. One by one     Each towering trunk beneath his sturdy stride     Fell back, and ever wider and more wide     The boundless prospect opened. Long he strayed,     From dawn till the last trace of slanting shade     Had vanished from the canyons, and, dismayed     At that far length to which his path had led,     He paused - at such a height where overhead     The clouds hung close, the air came thin and chill,     And all was hushed and calm and very still,     Save, from abysmal gorges, where the sound     Of tumbling waters rose, and all around     The pines, by those keen upper currents blown,     Muttered in multitudinous monotone.     Here, with the wind in lovely locks laid bare,     With arms oft raised in dedicative prayer,     Lost in mute rapture and adoring wonder,     He stood, till the far noise of noontide thunder,     Rolled down upon the muffled harmonies     Of wind and waterfall and whispering trees,     Made loneliness more lone. Some Panic fear     Would seize him then, as they who seemed to hear     In Tracian valleys or Thessalian woods     The god's hallooing wake the leafy solitudes;     I think it was the same: some piercing sense     Of Deity's pervasive immanence,     The Life that visible Nature doth indwell     Grown great and near and all but palpable . . .     He might not linger, but with winged strides     Like one pursued, fled down the mountain-sides -     Down the long ridge that edged the steep ravine,     By glade and flowery lawn and upland green,     And never paused nor felt assured again     But where the grassy foothills opened. Then,     While shadows lengthened on the plain below     And the sun vanished and the sunset-glow     Looked back upon the world with fervid eye     Through the barred windows of the western sky,     Homeward he fared, while many a look behind     Showed the receding ranges dim-outlined,     Highland and hollow where his path had lain,     Veiled in deep purple of the mountain rain.