In days of yore, while yet the world was new, And all around was beautiful to view When spring or summer ruled the happy hours, And golden fruit hung down mid opening flowers; When, if you chanced among the woods to stray, The rosy-footed dryad led the way, Or if, beside a mountain brook, your path, You ever caught some naïad at her bath: 'Twas in that golden day, that Damon strayed.

"Fidelis," says Beltane, "on so fair a night as this, methinks, the old fables and romances might well be true that tell of elves that dance on moony nights, and of shapely nymphs and lovely dryads that are the spirits of the trees.

Whether so me lift my lovely thought to sing, Come dance ye nimble Dryads by my side, Ye gentle wood-nymphs come; and with you bring The willing fawns that mought their music guide. Come nymphs and fawns, that haunts those shady groves, While I report my fortunes or my loves.

The branches of the trees lash one another like penitential dryades.

Here also playing on the grassy greene, Woodgods, and Satyres, and swift Dryades, With many Fairies oft were dauncing seene.