The Picture or the Lover's Resolution

Through weeds and thorns, and matted underwood / I force my way; now climb, and now descend / O'er rocks, or bare or mossy, with wild foot / Crushing the purple whorts; [1] while oft unseen, / Hurrying along the drifted forest-leaves, / The scared snake rustles. Onward still I toil, / I know not, ask not whither! A new joy, / Lovely as light, sudden as summer gust, / And gladsome as the first-born of the spring, / Beckons me on, or follows from behind, / Playmate, or guide! The master-passion quelled, / I feel that I am free. With dun-red bark / The fir-trees, and the unfrequent slender oak, / Forth from this tangle wild of bush and brake / Soar up, and form a melancholy vault / High o'er me, murmuring like a distant sea. / Here Wisdom might resort, and here Remorse; / Here too the love-lorn man, who, sick in soul, / And of this busy human heart aweary, / Worships the spirit of unconscious life / In tree or wild-flower. -- Gentle lunatic! / If so he might not wholly cease to be, / He would far rather not be that he is; / But would be something that he knows not of, / In winds or waters, or among the rocks!

But hence, fond wretch! breathe not contagion here! / No myrtle-walks are these: these are no groves / Where Love dare loiter! If in sullen mood / He should stray hither, the low stumps shall gore / His dainty feet, the briar and the thorn / Make his plumes haggard. Like a wounded bird / Easily caught, ensnare him, O ye Nymphs, / Ye Oreads chaste, ye dusky Dryades! / And you, ye Earth-winds! you that make at morn / The dew-drops quiver on the spiders' webs! / You, O ye wingless Airs! that creep between / The rigid stems of heath and bitten furze, / Within whose scanty shade, at summer-noon, / The mother-sheep hath worn a hollow bed -- / Ye, that now cool her fleece with dropless damp, / Now pant and murmur with her feeding lamb. / Chase, chase him, all ye Fays, and elfin Gnomes! / With prickles sharper than his darts bemock / His little Godship, making him perforce / Creep through a thorn-bush on yon hedgehog's back.