My people, not my passion, fills my heart."
"Then let me kiss thy garment," said the youth,
"And heaven be with thee, and on me thy grace."
Him then the monarch thus once more addressed:
"Be of good courage: hast thou yet forgot
What chaplets languished round thy unburnt hair,
In colour like some tall smooth beech's leaves
Curled by autumnal suns?"
How flattery
Excites a pleasant, soothes a painful shame!
"These," amid stifled blushes Tamar said,
"Were of the flowering raspberry and vine:
But, ah! the seasons will not wait for love;
Seek out some other now."
They parted here:
And Gebir bending through the woodlands culled
The creeping vine and viscous raspberry,
Less green and less compliant than they were;
And twisted in those mossy tufts that grow
On brakes of roses when the roses fade:
And as he passes on, the little hinds
That shake for bristly herds the foodful bough,
Wonder, stand still, gaze, and trip satisfied;
Pleased more if chestnut, out of prickly husk
Shot from the sandal, roll along the glade.
And thus unnoticed went he, and untired
Stepped up the acclivity; and as he stepped,
And as the garlands nodded o'er his brow,
Sudden from under a close alder sprang
Th' expectant nymph, and seized him unaware.