THE DRYADS.

LEIGH HUNT.

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 gold turf, o'er the dark lines
Which the sun makes when he declines,
Bend their linked 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 bay or beach,
When he would steal the huddled nest away
Of yellow bills upgaping 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
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 ;

The handy squirrel, nibbling hastily;

And fragrant hiving bee,

So happy that he will not move, not he,

Without a song; and hidden, loving dove,
With his deep breath; and bird of wakeful glen,
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 -
A poor, a pensive, yet a happy one,

Stealing, when daylight's common tasks are done,
An hour for mother's work, and singing low

While her tired husband and her children sleep.

This poem by Leigh Hunt gives quite clearly and fully the services that the Dryads were supposed to

render to the forests.

The subject is capable of very charming poetic treatment, as may be seen in the poem called "Rhocus," by James Russell Lowell, and from which the following selection is taken.

A youth named Rhocus, wandering in the wood,
Saw an old oak just trembling to its fall,

And, feeling pity for so fair a tree,

He propped its gray trunk with admiring care,
And with a thoughtless footstep loitered on.
But, as he turned, he heard a voice behind

That murmured "Rhocus ! " 'Twas as if the leaves,
Stirred by a passing breath, had murmured it,
And, while he paused bewildered, yet again
It murmured "Rhocus!" softer than a breeze.
He started, and beheld with dizzy eyes

What seemed the substance of a happy dream
Stand there before him, spreading a warm glow
Within the green glooms of the shadowy oak.
It seemed a woman's shape, yet all too fair
To be a woman, and with eyes too meek

For any that were wont to mate with gods.
But like a goddess stood she there,

And like a goddess all too beautiful
To feel the guilt-born earthliness of shame.
"Rhocus, I am the Dryad of this tree,"
Thus she began, dropping her low-toned words
Serene, and full, and clear, as drops of dew, -
“And with it I am doomed to live and die;
The rain and sunshine are my caterers,
Nor have I other bliss than simple life;
Now ask me what thou wilt, that I can give,
And with a thankful joy it shall be thine.”

Then Rhocus, with a flutter at the heart,
Yet, by the prompting of such beauty, bold,
Answered: "What is there that can satisfy
The endless craving of the soul but love?
Give me thy love, or but the hope of that
Which must be evermore my spirit's goal."
After a little pause she said again,

But with a glimpse of sadness in her tone,
"I give it, Rhœcus, though a perilous gift;
An hour before the sunset meet me here."
And straightway there was nothing he could see
But the green glooms beneath the shadowy oak.