T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
From “Leto’s Child”
By Maurice Hewlett (1861–1923)(From Artemision, 1909) THERE between the trees* * * * * | |
| The prying Fauns and Woodmen dark | |
| And prick-ear’d Satyrs her did mark, | |
| How all abandon’d to her mood | |
| Of careless lovely lassitude— | 5 |
| So ripe, so melting, like a rose | |
| That dewy-hearted throbs and blows | |
| Languorous in the wind’s caresses— | |
| She lay becurtained in loose tresses, | |
| Not seeing what her half-dropt zone | 10 |
| Let of her bosom’s bower be shown, | |
| Or that soft thing abeating there, | |
| Ungirdled treasure, warm and bare. | |
| And as they peept and spied upon | |
| The goodly sight she made, came One | 15 |
| Adventurous, whom the Woodfolk dreaded, | |
| Great Pan the goat-foot, horny-headed, | |
| And saw her, and began to woo her | |
| With his fierce music to undo her, | |
| And make her former shames go pale | 20 |
| Beside her latter. Here’s no tale | |
| For me who walk in Hymnia’s beam, | |
| Under her moon-wove eyes adream, | |
| To tell you how Pan workt his will, | |
| Or how she fended, with what skill | 25 |
| Garner’d within that sweeter nest | |
| When she had laid on her Mate’s breast, | |
| And one the other comforted. | |
| Little enough that serv’d her stead | |
| This turn! Callisto was too tender | 30 |
| For the chill part: she must surrender. | |
| Like white dawns hung in golden mist | |
| That soon repent their wintry tryst | |
| And go aweeping, she too soon | |
| Gave him his hire, her body’s boon; | 35 |
| And, all the kinder for late frost, | |
| Was painful that he nothing lost | |
| By tardy chaffering. So he brought her | |
| To his tree-haunts, and lightly taught her | |
| All of love’s mystery; and this maid | 40 |
| For love’s sake thought that well betray’d | |
| Which had been life, had she but known it | |
| As afterwards she had to own it. | |
| Ah, passion of the love-denied | |
| That ventures all for’t far and wide, | 45 |
| That lacking sweet love falls to foul, | |
| And feeds the flesh and starves the soul! | |
| Her woe was working in her womb | |
| Where that seed lay that was her doom: | |
| Gotten by Pan, by Pan let lie | 50 |
| While he to other game gave eye, | |
| Forgetful of what he had wrought | |
| In the green forest when he taught | |
| Callisto love, and found her apt. * * * * * | |