Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.djvu/1000

 And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night, Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid, Follows with dancing and fills with delight The Mænad and the Bassarid; And soft as lips that laugh and hide The laughing leaves of the trees divide, And screen from seeing and leave in sight The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes; The wild vine slipping down leaves bare Her bright breast shortening into sighs; The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, But the berried ivy catches and cleaves To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

809. Hertha

I am that which began; Out of me the years roll; Out of me God and man; I am equal and whole; God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.

Before ever land was, Before ever the sea, Or soft hair of the grass, Or fair limbs of the tree, Or the flesh-colour'd fruit of my branches, I was, and thy soul was in me.