Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE FOREST, by HENRI FRANCOIS JOSEPH DE REGNIER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE FOREST, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Heroic forest of legend and of dream
Last Line: Of red-haired centaur and white unicorn.
Subject(s): Autumn; Forests; Life; Love; Nymphs; Seasons; Fall; Woods


HEROIC forest of legend and of dream,
If truth no more thy fabled lies I deem,
And if upon thy paths I meet no more
The weeping princesses I met of yore,
Nor the great, armored knights upon their way
Toward caves where some enchanted beauty lay,
Against whose coming opened, as by fate,
The Keep of Sadness or Love's Orchard-gate --
What matters it? Hast thou not, without cease,
By turn thy silences and harmonies,
Thy gentle Springs, rich Summers and in them
Thy ripeness with its cloak and diadem?
Hast thou not, happy forest, Autumns rolled
In purple vestiture and crowned with gold?
Hast thou not pine serene and oak-tree strong,
And frailer trunks that chant a wind-swept song?
O forest multitudinous as the sea,
Whose perfumes, in their turns, as bitter be,
As sweet as life, as strong, as full of fret. . . .
I came to thee to live and to forget
That once my vision was with fables fed,
For my dream heroes and my gods are dead.
To make thee live, to animate thy shade,
One need but be alone and undismayed,
Nor see in briery hollow and cool brake
Phantoms of dream or sacred creatures wake
To fill thy mystery and solitude.
Art thou not lovelier in thy lonely mood
When none dare stir the greenness of thy night?
For the horned Fauns who danced in loud delight
On the pine cones, on Autumn's foliage dry
Are gone, their hoofs upon the flints that fly
Waken no more the echoes of the glades;
The nymphs have left the springs like fleeting shades,
No more their fugitive forms, as water clear,
Misty and empty as the winds appear,
And the tree hides, closing its cloven bark,
The naked Dryad in the silence dark
A prisoner forever.
No man's sight
Sees that strange pagan and heraldic fight
Under the branches by the onset torn
Of red-haired Centaur and white Unicorn.





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