T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
The Vine
By Robert Herrick (15911674)(Songs from Hesperides, 1648) I DREAM’D this mortal part of mine | |
Was metamorphos’d to a vine; | |
Which crawling one and every way, | |
Enthrall’d my dainty Lucia. | |
Me thought, her long small legs and thighs | 5 |
I with my tendrils did surprise; | |
Her belly, buttocks, and her waist | |
By my soft nerv’lits were embrac’d: | |
About her head I writhing hung, | |
And with rich clusters (hid among | 10 |
The leaves) her temples I behung: | |
So that my Lucia seem’d to me | |
Young Bacchus ravisht by his tree. | |
My curles about her neck did crawl, | |
And arms and hands they did enthrall: | 15 |
So that she could not freely stir, | |
(All parts there made one prisoner). | |
But when I crept with leaves to hide | |
Those parts, which maids keep unespy’d, | |
Such fleeting pleasures there I took, | 20 |
That with the fancy I awoke; | |
And found (ah me!) this flesh of mine | |
More like a stock, then like a vine. | |