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. | |