Women

I

Girt with a girdle of morning-glory and vetches in full blossom, and twining a great wreath of heavy cornflowers round my head, I lie upon my back in the forest glade.

It is a fine summer afternoon, and sultry. In the pines overhead there is a faint murmur, continuous, a little sad; the birches, with their slender waving boughs, utter a quiet whisper, but no breeze is to be felt.

As I lie here, I presently fall to crooning a singsong chant⁠—not any known air, but one made up of many tunes, heard long ago, or never heard at all. The words, too, are either remembered, or they spring up as I sing. If the rhyme fails me, I do not break off the tune to find one, but make an assonance do just as well. So I sing of a dream I have dreamt, and then of love⁠—hot, burning love⁠—and I end with an invocation to the Faun of the wood; for my desire is toward him.