XL. “O) yes, she wander'd round and round

These knotted knees of mine, And found, and kiss'd the name she found,

And sweetly murmur'd thine.

“A teardrop trembled from its source,

And down my surface crept.
My sense of touch is something coarse,

But I believe she wept.

XLII. “ Then flush'd her cheek with rosy light,

She glanced across the plain ; But not a creature was in sight :

She kiss'd me once again.

XLIII.

“ Her kisses were so close and kind,

That, trust me on my word,
Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind,

But yet my sap was stirrid :

XLIV.
“ And even into my inmost ring

A pleasure I discern'd,
Like those blind motions of the Spring,

That show the year is turn'd.

“ Thrice-happy he that may caress

The ringlet's waving balm-
The cushions of whose touch may press

The maiden's tender palm,

“I, rooted here among the groves,

But languidly adjust My vapid vegetable loves

With anthers and with dust :

“ For ah ! the Dryad-days were brief

Whereof the poets talk, When that, which breathes within the leaf,

Could slip its bark and walk.

XLVIII.

“But could I, as in times foregone,

From spray, and branch, and stem, Have suck'd and gather'd into one

The life that spreads in them,

" She had not found me so remiss ;

But lightly issuing thro',
I would have paid her kiss for kiss

With usury thereto.”

O flourish high, with leafy towers,

And overlook the lea, Pursue thy loves among the bowers,

But leave thou mine to me.

LI.
O flourish, hidden deep in fern,

Old oak, I love thee well ;
A thousand thanks for what I learn

And what remains to tell.

LII,

“ 'Tis little more: the day was warm ;

At last, tired out with play, She sank her head upon her arm,

And at my feet she lay.

LIII.

“Her eyelids dropp'd their silken eaves.

I breathed upon her eyes
Thro' all the summer of my leaves

A welcome mix'd with sighs.

LIV.

“ I took the swarming sound of life

The music from the town-
The whispers of the drum and fife,

And lull’d them in my own.

“Sometimes I let a sunbeam slip

To light her shaded eye ;
A second flutter'd round her lip

Like a golden butterfly ;

“A third would glimmer on her neck

To make the necklace shine ;
Another slid, a sunny fleck,

From head to ancle fine.

“Then close and dark my arms I spread,

And shadow'd all her rest
Dropt dews upon her golden head,

An acorn in her breast.

LVIII.

“But in a pet she started up,

And pluck'd it out, and drew My little oakling from the cup,

And flung him in the dew.

“And yet it was a graceful gift

I felt a pang within
As when I see the woodman lift

His axe to slay my kin,