I HAVE two horns upon my head.
They please me, being garlanded
With creepy pine, and berries red
From some old secret hawthorn tree.
I have two horns, and hoofs also:
Brown questing hoofs, that clip and go
Over the mountain, high and low,
From sky-crack to the droning sea.
My mother would have shame of me
If she could see — if she could see —
Those horns and hoofs that make too free
With what she bore and bred so straight.
She taught me to be still and good;
To walk demure as maidens should;
Wear dainty slippers, silken snood,
And not come loitering home too late.
But now I dance, I dance all night,
By faint starlight or fierce moonlight,
Over the mountain, till the white
Dumb dawn comes fingering, soothing me.
With whom I dance, with whom I sing,
My mother need not know this thing. —
In my green chamber slumbering
She finds me sweet and white, when she
Strokes down my curls. She does not know
Two horns beneath her fingers grow:
Rough horns: and I have hoofs also,
Not feet like pale flow’rs on the floor. Oh, if you met me on the hill,
Moon-maddened, dancing to my fill, —
Oh, Mother, could you love me still, —
This wild-heart Thing you never bore?