Dance Of The Sylvan Poem by Maurice Rowlands

Through mists and dark magicka
Ethereal and dreamlike
Where moonlight shatters
On the stream, like
Fireflies dancing in frost light
The Sylvan awakens
And creeps out and emerges
From her leafy dark portal
A sprite of the forest, immortal
Beneath the leaves in dark twilight
Deep in shadows on the verges
Where the owl calls at midnight

A spirit of a traveller’s tales
Spoken only in folklore
In legends and fables
Over ale jugs on tables
In inns and in taverns
And around the crackling of fires
From hunters taking shelter in caverns
She dances through the woodlands
Watched only from the shades
By dryads and by spriggans
And the ghosts of dead brigands
Long ago lost in the glades

From her delicate hands
Spirals of magic and hex
Sparkle and reflects
Interwoven and spellbound
On the hawthorns she collects
A free spirit yet forest bound
Forbidden from the lands
Of the living, she dances and dances
To the beat of the forest
With the slightest of sound
Like a phantom rising up
From the ancient wooded ground

Upon a mossy mound she stands
And looks up to the skies
The swirl of stars and of galaxies
Tangled up in the strands
Of her hair so windswept and wild
Illuminating the night
Upon this feared dark child
Drenching her forest with the light
Of starlight, her delight
Glistening off the antlers
Of the stag, and the silver white horses
That canter through the night

Over twisted toadstools
And the footprints of mules
Over faerie rings, and gold rings
From skeletons of lost travellers
Face down in moss pools
She dances and dances
Until the witches retreat to the caves
And the moonlight then fades
As the canopy of the forest at dawn
Shows a warning she looks up to glance
At the flashes of light of the morn
The Sylvan will continue to dance