As he sits by the side of the stream, he asks whence comes its charm:
Whilst gazing on the stream, whose new swollen waters
Yet turbid flow, what strange imaginings
Possess my soul and fill it with delight.
The rippling wave is like her aching brow;
The fluttering line of storks, her timid tongue;
The foaming spray, her white loose floating vest;
And this meandering course the current tracks
Her undulating gait.
Then he sees a creeper without flowers, and a strange attraction impels him to embrace it, for its likeness to his lost love: