English

Prythee , sing something sweet to me — you that can play
First and second at once. Then I too will essay
To croak on the pipes: and yon lad shall salute
Our ears with a melody breathed through his flute
In the cave by the green oak our watch we will keep,
And goatish old Pan we'll defraud of his sleep.

For yon oaken avenue, swain, you must steer,
Where a statue of figwood, you'll see, has been set:
It has never been barked, has three legs and no ear;
But I think there is life in the patriarch yet.
He is handsomely shrined within fair chapel-walls;
Where, fringed with sweet cypress and myrtle and bay,
A stream ever-fresh from the rock's hollow falls,
And the ringleted vine her ripe store doth display:
And the blackbirds, those shrill piping songsters of spring,
Wake the echoes with wild inarticulate song:

D APHNIS , thou slumberest on the leaf strown lea,
Thy frame at rest, thy springes newly spread
O'er the fell side. But two are hunting thee:
Pan, and Priapus with his fair young head
Hung with wan ivy. See! they come, they leap
Into thy lair — fly, fly, — shake off the coil of sleep!

To Pan doth white limbed Daphnis offer here
(He once piped sweetly on his herdsman's flute)
His reeds of many a stop, his barbed spear,
And scrip, wherein he held his hoards of fruit.

Yours be yon dew-steep'd roses, yours be yon
Thick-clustering ivy, maids of Helicon:
Thine, Pythian Paean, that dark-foliaged bay;
With such thy Delphian crags thy front array.
This horn'd and shaggy ram shall stain thy shrine,
Who crops e'en now the feathering turpentine.

Ye that would fain net fish and wealth withal,
For bare existence harrowing yonder mere,
To this our Lady slay at even-fall
That holy fish, which, since it hath no peer
For gloss and sheen, the dwellers about here
Have named the Silver Fish. This done, let down
Your nets, and draw them up, and never fear
To find them empty

IDYLL XXXI

L OVES

A H for this the most accursed, unendurable of ills!
Nigh two months a fevered fancy for a maid my bosom fills
Fair she is, as other damsels: but for what the simplest swain
Claims from the demurest maiden, I must sue and sue in vain
Yet doth now this thing of evil my longsuffering heart beguile,
Though the utmost she vouchsafes me is the shadow of a smile:
And I soon shall know no respite, have no solace e'en in sleep.

IDYLL XXX

The D EATH OF A DONIS

C YTHERA saw Adonis
And knew thaThe was dead;
She marked the brow, all grisly now,
The cheek no longer red;
And " Bring the boar before me "
Unto her Loves she said.

Forthwith her winged attendants
Ranged all the woodland o'er,
And found and bound in fetters
Threefold the grisly boar:

IDYLL XXIX

L OVES

" Sincerity comes with the wine-cup, " my dear.
Then now o'er our wine-cups let us be sincere.
My soul's treasured secret to you I'll impart;
It is this; that I never won fairly your heart
One half of my life, I am conscious, has flown;
The residue lives on your image alone.
You are kind, and I dream I'm in paradise then;
You are angry, and lo! all is darkness again
It is right to torment one who loves you? Obey

IDYLL XXVIII

The D ISTAFF

D ISTAFF , blithely whirling distaff, azure eyed Athena's gift
To the sex the aim and object of whose lives is house hold thrift,
Seek with me the gorgeous city raised by Neilus, where a plain
Roof of palm-green rush o'er arches Aphrodite's hallowed fane
Thither ask I Zeus to waft me, fain to see my old friend's face,
Nicias, o'er whose birth presided every passion breathing Grace;
Fain to meet his answering welcome; and anon deposit thee