Maybe he is dead, and perchance, deeper in the wood, you may come upon his marble form in a winding-sheet of drifting leaves.
Not a god, maybe, you have pictured him, not a prince, but surely as a friend--the mysterious Green Friend of the green silence and the golden hush of Summer noons.

The mysterious Green Friend of the woods! So strangely by our side all Summer, so strangely gone away.

It is in vain to await him under our morning sycamore, nor under the great maples shall we find him walking, nor amid the alder thickets discover him, nor yet in the little ravine beneath the pines.

No! he has surely gone away, and his great house seems empty without him, desolate, filled with lamentation, all its doors and windows open to the Winter snows.
But the Green Friend had left me a message.

I found it at the roots of some violets.