The Dryad
My dryad hath her hiding place
Among ten thousand trees.
She flies to cover
At step of a lover,
And where to find her lovely face
Only the woodland bees
Ever discover,
Bringing her honey
From meadows sunny,
Cowslip and clover.
Vainly on beech and oak I knock
Amid the silent boughs;
Then hear her laughter,
The moment after,
Making of me her laughing-stock
Within her hidden house.
The young moon with her wand of pearl
Taps on her hidden door,
Bids her beauty flower
In that woodland bower,
All white like a mortal girl,
With moonshine hallowed o’er.
Yet were there thrice ten thousand trees
To hide her face from me,
Not all her fleeing
Should ‘scape my seeing,
Nor all her ambushed sorceries
Secure concealment be
For her bright being.
Yea! should she by the laddered pine
Steal to the stars on high,
Her fairy whiteness,
Hidden in brightness,
Her hiding-place would so out-shine
The constellated sky,
She could not ’scape the eye
Of my pursuing,
Nor her fawn-foot lightness
Out-speed my wooing.
