Dear stream, I drink thy waters for his sake;

And on this grass, and by this flowering thorn,

His noon-day couch, we murmur’d half awake:

River, why flow’st thou on, so placid gleaming?

Why waves the grass its green and nymph-like hair?

Why both so tender and complacent seeming,

When he is gone who made you trebly fair?

Warm not thy waters with the love he gave,

O all unconscious or ungrateful stream?

Here would he sit, tempting the lazy wave,

With feet, whose ivory shamed some mermaid’s dream:

’Tis I, not nature, err; she clasps her child,

And wins divinely, even as then she smiled.

{25}

{25}

XXV.

Bosomed in the young years, perchance repose

As lovely forms, and spirits as divine;

He in the perfectness of youth arose,

Soon death may hold him in her mystic twine;

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