Nymphs Books

“Not to waste the spring
I threw down everything,
And ran into the open world
To sing what I could sing...
To dance what I could dance!
And join with everyone!
I wandered with a reckless heart
beneath the newborn sun.

First stepping through the blushing dawn,
I crossed beneath a garden bower,
counting every hermit thrush,
counting every hour.

When morning's light was ripe at last,
I stumbled on with reckless feet;
and found two nymphs engaged in play,
approaching them stirred no retreat.
With naked skin, their weaving hands,
in form akin to Calliope's maids,
shook winter currents from their hair
to weave within them vernal braids.

I grabbed the first, who seemed the stronger
by her soft and dewy leg,
and swore blind eyes,
Lest I find I,
before Diana, a hunted stag.

But the nymphs they laughed,
and shook their heads.
and begged I drop beseeching hands.
For one was no goddess, the other no huntress,
merely two girls at play in the early day.

"Please come to us, with unblinded eyes,
and raise your ready lips.
We will wash your mouth with watery sighs,
weave you springtime with our fingertips."

So the nymphs they spoke,
we kissed and laid,
by noontime's hour,
our love was made,
Like braided chains of crocus stems,
We lay entwined, I laid with them,
Our breath, one glassy, tideless sea,
Our bodies draping wearily.
We slept, I slept so lucidly,
with hopes to stay this memory.

I woke in dusty afternoon,
Alone, the nymphs had left too soon,
I searched where perched upon my knees
Heard only larks' songs in the trees.

"Be you, the larks, my far-flung maids?
With lilac feet and branchlike braids...
Who sing sweet odes to my elation,
in your larking exaltation!"

With these, my clumsy, carefree words,
The birds they stirred and flew away,
"Be I, poor Actaeon," I cried, "Be dead…
Before they, like Hippodamia, be gone astray!"
Yet these words, too late, remained unheard,
By lark, that parting, morning bird.
I looked upon its parting flight,
and smelled the coming of the night;
desirous, I gazed upon its jaunt,
as Leander gazes Hellespont.

Now the hour was ripe and dark,
sensuous memories of sunlight past,
I stood alone in garden bowers
and asked the value of my hours.
Time was spent or time was tossed,
Life was loved and life was lost.
I kissed the flesh of tender girls,
I heard the songs of vernal birds.
I gazed upon the blushing light,
aware of day before the night.

So let me ask and hear a thought:
Did I live the spring I’d sought?
It's true in joy, I walked along,
took part in dance,
and sang the song.
and never tried to bind an hour
to my borrowed garden bower;
nor did I once entreat
a day to slumber at my feet.
Yet days aren't lulled by lyric song,
like morning birds they pass along,
o'er crests of trees, to none belong;
o'er crests of trees of drying dew,
their larking flight, my hands, eschew
Thus I'll say it once and true…

From all that I saw,
and everywhere I wandered,
I learned that time cannot be spent,
It only can be squandered.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy