The matted sedge ; a second, as she swims,
Looks round with pride upon her easy limbs ;
A third, just holding by a bough, lets float
Her slumberous body like an anchored boat,
Looking with level eye at the smooth flakes
And the strange crooked quivering which it makes,
Seen through the weltering of the watery glass :
Others (which make the rest look at them) pass,
Nodding and smiling in the middle tide,
And luring swans on, which like fondled things
Eye poutingly their hands; yet following, glide
With unsuperfluous lift of their proud wings.

THE DRYADS.

These are the tawny 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 link'd 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

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,
Low, lovelier note is like a gentle wife,
А

poor, a pensive, yet a happy one,
Stealing, when day-light's cominon tasks are done,
An hour for mother's work, and singing low,
While her tired husband and her children sleep.*

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