Why should the girls who came from under elm trees

With garlands in their hands and on their foreheads,

Oppress my thoughts and grieve me? At the edge

Of thinning woods, beside my quiet house,

I watched the meadows, green and splashed with colour,

Climb upward in a gentle slope, and hawthorn

Scatter the earth with overflow of bloom,

When flitting by the wayside they discerned me,

Began to whisper secrets and with laughter

And haste avoided me, although I called them,

Although my pipe implored with tender music.

And not until I drank and caught my image

Down in the shallow well: my matted locks

And furrowed brow, did I discover what

Their flying words had shrilled to one another,

What rang and echoed from the rocky wall.

Now I have lost what zest I had in poising

My fishing-rod above the pond, and coaxing

My willow-pipe—that proved so ineffective—

With agile touch. But through the misty greyness

Of dusk I shall beset the Lord of Harvests

With the lament that he denied me beauty

When he invested me with deathlessne