Once Hermes paused in arrowy flight
And while he hovered to alight,
Beheld a winsome mortal maid;
With other maids she danced and played;
They all were fair; he thought this one
The fairest thing beneath the sun.
Then Hermes, like a golden gleam,
Darted and dropped beside a stream;
He called up from the water clear
A naiad; in her dripping ear
He whispered long and low, while she
Nodded and chuckled pleasantly.
She waved her hand; he flew away;
A mist formed ’round the maids at play.
Then flying Hermes did invade
The thickening mist and kissed the maid,
And flew reluctantly away
With sighs and smiles; (for many a day
Olympian letters went astray.)
The other maidens midst the mist,
Where they stood silently unkissed,
Saw nothing though they heard a sound
Like rose leaves falling on the ground.
The mist grew thin that had concealed
The startled maid; she stood revealed
With conscious blush and just below
A budding branch of mistletoe.
And so the whole world came to know
Of mist and maids and mistletoe.
Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been corrected in
this version, but minor inconsistencies and archaic forms have been
retained as printed.
Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of their
respective poems in this version.
Two instances of a doubled word has been changed to single: