I.

[Scene, part of the island of Naxos. Enter, sundry Dryads, habited as fair young maidens adorned with flowers, and bearing in their hands branches of trees.]

_Dryad_: We shadowy Oceanides, Jove's warders of the island trees, The tufted pillars tall and stout, And all the bosky camp about, Maintain our lives in sounding shades Of old æolian colonnades; But post about the neighbor land In woof of insubstantial wear: Our ways are on the water sand, Our joy is in the desert air. The very best of our delights Are by the moon of summer nights. Darkness to us is holiday: When winds and waves are up at play, When, on the thunder-beaten shore, The swinging breakers split and roar, Then is the moment of our glory, In shadow of a promontory, To trip and skip it to and fro, Even as the flashing bubbles go. Or on the bleaker banks that lie, For the salt seething wash, too high, Where rushes grow so sparse and green, With baked and barren floors between. We glance about in mazy quire, With much of coming and retire; Nor let the limber measure fail, Till, down behind the ocean bed, The night dividing star is sped, And Cynthia stoops the marish vale, Wound in clouds and vigil pale, Trailing the curtains of the west About her ample couch of rest. Thus, nightly on, we lead the year Through all the constellated sphere. But more obscure, in brakes and bowers, During the sun-appointed hours, We lodge, and are at rest, and see, Dimly, the day's festivity, Nor hail the spangled jewel set Upon Aurora's coronet; Nor trail in any morning dew; Nor roam the park, nor tramp the pool Of lucid waters pebble cool, Nor list the satyr's far halloo. Noon, and the glowing hours, seem Mutations of a laboring dream. Yet subject, still, to Jove's decree, That governs, from the Olympian doors, The populous and lonely shores, We do a work of destiny; When any mortal, sorely spent, Girt with the thorns of discontent, Or care, or hapless love, invades, This ancient neighborhood of shades, Our gracious leave is to dispense, Of woods, the slumbrous influence; The waverings and the murmurings Of umber shades and leafy wings; Through all the courts of sense applying, With sights, and sounds, and odorous sighing, To the world-wearied soul of man, The gentle universal Pan-- As now we must: the roots around, Of forests clutch a certain sound Of weary feet; go, sisters, out: Some one is pining, hereabout.