The Wood-Nymph

-After a picture by Burne Jones- The green leaves, ah, the green leaves cover me: Would I might lose this unloved human life And share the happy being of the leaves! For lo, they live and grow and drink the sun And sip the nectar of the heavenly showers And have no sorrow with it; but they grow Happily, and Pan at even blesses them. While I, alas me hapless, I am joined Part to their life, and all in longing to them; Part to the gods, the bright gods whom I see Flash through the woods at even or morn, and make The beautiful familiar trees seem strange; And part to mortals and their little life. Green leaves that cover me, to you I mourn, My sisters, my more happy sisters, ye Rustle, rustle in the summer air, With happy cries of birds among your boughs: Be happy, though I am not happy. Nay, I am not all unhappy, evermore. One while a bird sings on the topmost bough And my heart sings, forgetting life and death And sorrow: so forgetting I were blest, And bliss the gods deny me. When they walk The forest before sundawn--Artemis, Girt for the chase and followed by her hounds, Queen Herê or another, ere the dawn, Or Aphrodite with the rosy dawn-- I may not speak my longings, but they pass, Pass unregardful to their happy heaven. They see me not--not me, akin to Gods! These tears are vain.--When mortals pass at eve, Treading a delicate path between the trees, Pale mortal men and women, with their loves-- It pains me that I see them, for I know I am not as they are, and cannot share The little love that fills their little life-- Vain, vain; and they too pass and see me not. Ah me, dear leaves, forsaken of gods and men, And sad because I cannot live their life, Will you not love me whom none others love? Will you not teach me how to live your life, My sisters, my more happy sisters?--live In peace and quietness and still content, And freshen and fade and freshen and have no care And have no longing, full of peace to live, Forgetting thus for ever life and death And Gods and men and sorrow and delight.