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With sweet sisterly caresses,
Arm in arm they speed along
(“Now pursuing, now retreating,
Now in circling troops they meet,
To brisk notes in cadence beating,
Glance their many twinkling feet.
Slow melting strains their Queen’s approach declare.
Where’er she turns the Graces homage pay,
With arms sublime, that float upon the air”);
She comes—the gentle Lady of my Lay,
Well pleased that, for her welcome to prepare,
I borrow music from the Muse of Gray.

His heroine was the lovely Paphian Queen,
Mine seems the Huntress of the Sylvan scene,
The chaste Diana, with her Nymphs, in gay
And graceful beauty keeping holiday.
Sudden she pauses in the race of joy,
Around the Cradle Bower where sleeps the Boy,
And, with a sunny smile of gladness, sees
His golden ringlets, on the dancing breeze,
Shading his eyelids—and, with quick delight,
Bids her wild Nymphs to wing their merry flight
Home to their morning nests, and leave her care
To watch the slumberer in his rose-leafed chair.
He, in his beauty, to her fancy seems
To be the young Endymion of her dreams
Of yester-evening, when, alone and still,
Waiting the coming of the whip-poor-will,