Page:Poems and lyrics of the joy of earth.djvu/95

Rh

love exceeding a simple love of the things
 * That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;

Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings
 * From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck;

Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball;
 * Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook;

The good physician Melampus, loving them all,
 * Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.

For him the woods were a home and gave him the key
 * Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers.