Now let us forth to find the young witch Spring,

Seated amid her bow'rs and birds and buds,

Busy with loveliness.—And, wandering

Among old forests that the sunlight floods,

Or vales of hermit-holy solitudes,

Dryads shall beckon us from where they cling,

Their limbs an oak-bark brown; their hair—wild woods

Have perfumed—wreathed with earliest leaves: and they,

Regarding us with a dew-sparkling eye,

Shall whispering greet us, as the rain the rye,

Or from wild lips melodious welcome fling,

Like hidden waterfalls with winds at play.

Let us surprise the Naiad ere she slips—

Nude at her toilette—in her fountain's glass;

With damp locks dewy and evasive hips,

Cool-dripping, but an instant seen, alas!

Then we may meet the Oread, whose eyes

Are dewdrops where twin heavens shine confessed:

She, all the maiden modesty's surprise

Rosying her temples,—to slim loins and breast

Tempestuous, brown, bewildering tresses pressed,—

Shall stand a moment's moiety in wise

Of some delicious dream, then shrink, distressed,

Like some wild mist that, hardly seen, is gone,

Footing the ferny hillside without sound;

Or, like storm sunlight, her white limbs shall bound,

And we may see the Satyrs in the shades

Of drowsy dells pipe, and, goat-footed, dance;

And Pan himself reel rollicking through the glades;

Or, hidden in bosky bow'rs, the Lust, perchance,

Faun-like, that waits with heated, animal glance

The advent of the Loveliness that wades

Thigh-deep through flowers, naked as Romance,

All unsuspecting, till two hairy arms

Clasp her rebellious beauty, panting white,

Whose tearful terror, struggling into might,

Beats the brute brow resisting, but evades

Not him, for whom the gods designed her charms.