Tossing your tresses, and wreathing your hands,
Let your dainty feet dance to my wave-wafted strain.”
The Græco-Latin Naiades, or Water-nymphs, were also of this family: they generally inhabited the country, and resorted to the woods or meadows near the stream over which they presided. It was in some such locality on the Asiatic coast that the ill-fated Hylas was carried off by Isis and the River-nymphs, whilst obtaining water from a fountain.
“The chiefs composed their wearied limbs to rest,
But Hylas sought the springs, by thirst opprest;
At last a fount he found with flow’rets graced:
On the green bank above his urn he placed.
’Twas at a time when old Ascanius made
An entertainment in his watery bed,
For all the Nymphs and all the Naiades