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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  The Vine

T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.

The Vine

By Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
 
(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.