Windsor Forest by Alexander Pope [extract]

Above the rest a rural nymph was famed,

Thy offspring, Thames! the fair Lodona named;

(Lodona's fate, in long oblivion cast,

The Muse shall sing, and what she sings shall last.)

Scarce could the Goddess from her nymph be known,

But by the crescent and the golden zone:

She scorned the praise of beauty, and the care;

A belt her waist, a fillet binds her hair;

A painted quiver on her shoulder sounds,

And with her dart the flying deer she wounds.

It chanced, as eager of the chase the maid

Beyond the forest's verdant limits strayed

Pan saw and loved, and burning with desire

Pursued her flight, her flight increased his fire.

Not half so swift the trembling doves can fly,

When the fierce eagle cleaves the liquid sky;

Not half so swiftly the fierce eagle moves,

When through the clouds he drives the trembling doves;

As from the God she flew with furious pace,

Or as the God, more furious, urged the chase.

Now fainting, sinking, pale, the nymph appears;

Now close behind his sounding steps she hears;

And now his shadow reached her as she run,

(His shadow lengthened by the setting sun)

And now his shorter breath, with sultry air,

Pants on her neck, and fans her parting hair.

In vain on Father Thames she calls for aid,

Nor could Diana help her injured maid.

Faint, breathless, thus she prayed, nor prayed in vain;

‘Ah Cynthia! ah—though banished from thy train,

Let me, O let me, to the shades repair,

My native shades—there weep, and murmur there.’

She said, and melting as in tears she lay,

In a soft, silver stream dissolved away.

The silver stream her virgin coldness keeps,

For ever murmurs, and for ever weeps;

Still bears the name the hapless virgin bore,

And bathes the forest where she ranged before.

In her chaste current oft the Goddess laves,

And with celestial tears augments the waves.

Oft in her glass the musing shepherd spies

The headlong mountains and the downward skies,

The watery landskip of the pendant woods,

And absent trees that tremble in the floods;

In the clear azure gleam the flocks are seen,

And floating forests paint the waves with green.

Through the fair scene roll slow the lingering streams,

Then foaming pour along, and rush into the Thames.

The Cambridge Companion to Alexander Pope, ed. by Pat Rogers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 54-5.