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bottom of the mere, believing Pan was following, she wrapped the weeds about her. What could the robber do, so suddenly baffled? Conscious of his shaggy hide, and from childhood untaught to swim, he dares not trust himself to the deep waters. Lavish complaint made he of heartless Bromius, of the jealous lake and jealous shaft;^[1] then spying a young plane tree with long stem and countless branches and summit aspiring to heaven he set it by him and heaped fresh sand about it and sprinkled it with the longed-for waters, and thus commanded it: “Live long, O tree, as the memorable token of my vow, and do thou at least stoop down and cherish the secret abode of this hard-hearted nymph, and cover her waters with thy leaves. Let her not, I pray, though she has deserved it, be scorched by the sun’s heat or lashed by cruel hail; only mind thou to bestrew the pool with thickly scattered leaves. Then will I long remember thee and the mistress of this kindly place, and guard both to a secure old age, so that the trees of Jove and Phoebus, and the twy-coloured poplar shade^[2] and my own pines may marvel at thy boughs.” So he spake; and the tree, quickened with the old passion of the god, hangs and broods over the full mere with drooping stem, and searches the waves with loving shadows, and hopes for their embrace; but the breath of the waters put it from them, and suffered not its touch. At length it struggles upward, and poised upon its base cunningly lifts its head without any knot, as though it sank with another root into the bottom of the lake. Now not even the Naiad, Phoebe’s votary, hates it, but her stream invites the boughs she banished.

Such is the gift I bring thee on thy birthday,