The matted sedge; a second, as she swims, And luring swans on, which like fondled things THE DRYADS. THESE are the tawny Dryads, who love nooks Or feel the air in groves, or pull green dresses 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 they, at sound of the brute, insolent horn, And take into their sudden laps with joy The startled hare that did but peep abroad; And from the trodden road Help the bruised hedgehog. And at rest, they love The back-turned pheasant, hanging from the tree His sunny drapery; And handy squirrel, nibbling hastily; And fragrant-living bee, So happy, that he will not move, not he, Without a song; and hidden, amorous dove, With his deep breath; and bird of wakeful glow, Whose louder song is like the voice of life, Triumphant o'er death's image; but whose deep, A poor, a pensive, yet a happy one, Stealing, when day-light's common tasks are done, * This passage respecting the nightingale is not altogether "in keeping," (to use a painter's phrase), nor, indeed, are some others of this fragment; but the author retained them partly to introduce the passage itself; and in behalf of the latter he bespeaks the reader's indulgence, for a reason which the sensibility of true taste will allow him; namely, that the image is a copy from life, and from his mother. THE EPHYDRIADS, OR, NYMPHS OF THE FOUNTAINS.-A SKETCH. 'Tis there the Ephydriads haunt ;-there, where a gap Betwixt a heap of tree-tops, hollow and dun, Shews where the waters run, And whence the fountain's tongue begins to lap. There lie they, lulled by little whiffling tones Of rills among the stones, Or by the rounder murmur, fast and flush, Of the escaping gush, That laughs and tumbles, like a conscious thing, For joy of all its future travelling. The lizard circuits them; and his grave will |