XXXIX.

But tell me, did she read the name

I carved with many vows,

When last with throbbing heart I came
To rest beneath thy boughs?

XL.

"O yes, she wandered round and round

These knotted knees of mine,

And found, and kissed the name she found, And sweetly murmured thine.

XLI.

"A tear-drop trembled from its source,

And down my surface crept.

My sense of touch is something coarse,

But I believe she wept.

XLII.

"Then flushed her cheek with rosy light,

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

XLIV.

"And even into my inmost ring A pleasure I discerned,

Like those blind motions of the Spring,

"Thrice-happy he that may caress

The ringlet's waving balm

The cushions of whose touch may press The maiden's tender palm.

XLVI.

❝I, rooted here among the groves,

But languidly adjust

My vapid vegetable loves

With anthers and with dust:

XLVII.

"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 sucked and gathered into one
The life that spreads in them,

XLIX.

"She had not found me so remiss; But lightly issuing through,

I would have paid her kiss for kiss

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.

""T is 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 dropped their silken eaves. I breathed upon her eyes

Through all the summer of my leaves A welcome mixed with sighs.

LIV.

"I took the swarming sound of life

The music from the town

The whispers of the drum and fife,

And lulled them in my own.

LV.

"Sometimes I let a sunbeam slip,
To light her shaded eye;

A second fluttered round her lip
Like a golden butterfly;

LVI.

"A third would glimmer on her neck

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

From head to ankle fine.

LVII.

"Then close and dark my arms I spread,

And shadowed all her rest
Dropt dews upon her golden head,

An acorn in her breast.

LVIII.

"But in a pet she started up,
And plucked it out, and drew
My little oakling from the cup,
And flung him in the dew.