TO A PASTORAL POET.

By Austin Henry Dobson

Among my best I put your Book,

O Poet of the breeze and brook!

( That breeze and brook which blows and falls

More soft to those in city walls )

Among my best: and keep it still

Till down the fair grass-girdled hill,

Where slopes my garden-slip, there goes

The wandering wind that wakes the rose,

And scares the cohort that explore

The broad-faced sun-flower o'er and o'er,

Or starts the restless bees that fret

The bindweed and the mignonette.

Then I shall take your Book, and dream

I lie beside some haunted stream;

And watch the crisping waves that pass,

And watch the flicker in the grass;

And wait — and wait — and wait to see

The Nymph... that never comes to me!