Which most they love; the fretful wasp, that earliest vintager Of the blue grapes, hath not persistency So constant as this simple shepherd-boy For my poor lips, his joyous purity And laughing sunny eyes might well decoy A Dryad from her oath to Artemis; For very beautiful is he, his mouth was made to kiss; His argent forehead, like a rising moon Over the dusky hills of meeting brows, Is crescent shaped, the hot and Tyrian noon Leads from the myrtle-grove no goodlier spouse For Cytheræa, the first silky down Fringes his blushing cheeks, and his young limbs are strong and brown; p. 122And he is rich, and fat and fleecy herds Of bleating sheep upon his meadows lie, And many an earthen bowl of yellow curds Is in his homestead for the thievish fly To swim and drown in, the pink clover mead Keeps its sweet store for him, and he can pipe on oaten reed. p. 122 And yet I love him not; it was for thee I kept my love; I knew that thou would’st come To rid me of this pallid chastity, Thou fairest flower of the flowerless foam Of all the wide Ægean, brightest star Of ocean’s azure heavens where the mirrored planets are! I knew that thou would’st come, for when at first The dry wood burgeoned, and the sap of spring Swelled in my green and tender bark or burst To myriad multitudinous blossoming Which mocked the midnight with its mimic moons That did not dread the dawn, and first the thrushes’ rapturous tunes Startled the squirrel from its granary, And cuckoo flowers fringed the narrow lane, Through my young leaves a sensuous ecstasy p. 123Crept like new wine, and every mossy vein Throbbed with the fitful pulse of amorous blood, And the wild winds of passion shook my slim stem’s maidenhood. p. 123 The trooping fawns at evening came and laid Their cool black noses on my lowest boughs, And on my topmost branch the blackbird made A little nest of grasses for his spouse, And now and then a twittering wren would light On a thin twig which hardly bare the weight of such delight. I was the Attic shepherd’s trysting place, Beneath my shadow Amaryllis lay, And round my trunk would laughing Daphnis chase The timorous girl, till tired out with play She felt his hot breath stir her tangled hair, And turned, and looked, and fled no more from such delightful snare. Then come away unto my ambuscade
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