THE NYMPHS.

Dique petitorum, dixit, salvete locorum,
Tuque novos cœlo terra datura Deos;
Fluminaque, et Fontes, quibus utitur hospita tellus,
Et Nemorum Divæ, Naïadumque chori.

ÖVID.

PART I.

SPIRIT, who waftest me where'er I will,

And seest, with finer eyes, what infants see, Feeling all lovely truth

With the wise health of everlasting youth, Beyond the motes of Bigotry's sick eye,

Or the blind feel of false Philosophy,

O Spirit, O Muse of mine,

Frank, and quick-dimpled to all social glee,
And yet most sylvan of the earnest Nine,
Who on the fountain-shedding hill,

Leaning about among the clumpy bays
Look at the clear Apollo while he plays ;-
Take me, now, now, and let me stand
On some such lovely land,

Where I may feel me, as I please,

Or on some outward slope, with ruffling hair,

Be level with the air;

For a new smiling sense has shot down through me, And from the clouds, like stars, bright eyes are

beckoning to me.

Arrived! Arrived! O shady spots of ground,
What calmness ye strike round,

Hushing the soul as if with hand on lips!
And are ye seen then but of animal eyes,
Prone, or side-looking with a blank surmise?
And do ye hear no finer-fancied words

Than the sweet whistle of the repeating birds?
And are ye haunted of no lovelier trips

Than the poor stag's, who startled, as he sips,

Perks

ye

up

with timid mouth, from which the water

drips?

whom ancient wisdom, in it's graces,

Made guardians of these places;

Etherial human shapes, perhaps the souls

Of poets and poetic women, staying

To have their fill of pipes and leafy playing,

Ere they drink heavenly change from nectar-bowls;

You finer people of the earth,

Nymphs of all names, and woodland Geniuses,

I see you, here and there, among the trees,
Shrouded in noon-day respite of your mirth:
This hum in air, which the still ear perceives,
Is your unquarrelling voice among the leaves;
And now I find, whose are the laughs and stirrings
That make the delicate birds dart so in whisks and
whirrings.

There are the fair-limbed Nymphs o' the Woods, (Look ye,

Whom kindred Fancies have brought after me!)
There are the fair-limbed Dryads, who love nooks
In the dry depth of oaks;

Or feel the air in groves, or pull green dresses
For their glad heads in rooty wildernesses;

Or on the golden turf, o'er the dark lines,
Which the sun makes when he declines,

Bend their white dances in and out the pines.

They tend all forests old, and meeting trees,
Wood, copse, or queach, or slippery dell o'erhung
With firs, and with their dusty apples strewn ;
And let the visiting beams the boughs among,
And bless the trunks from clingings of disease
And wasted hearts that to the night-wind groan.
They screen the cuckoo when he sings; and teach
The mother blackbird how to lead astray

The unformed spirit of the foolish boy

From thick to thick, from hedge to layery beech, When he would steal the huddled nest away

Of yellow bills, up-gaping for their food,

And spoil the song of the free solitude.

And they, at sound of the brute, insolent horn,
Hurry the deer out of the dewy morn;

And take into their sudden laps with joy
The startled hare that did but peep abroad;

And from the trodden road