Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide.

Annihilating all that's made, To a green thought in a green shade.

And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept their time.

How vainly men themselves amaze, / To win the palm, the oak, or bays; / And their incessant labours see / Crowned from some single herb or tree.

As lines, so loves oblique, may well Themselves in every angle greet; But ours, so truly parallel, Though infinite, can never meet.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green glade ... Such was that happy garden-state.

Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, lady, were no crime.