Ye mountain valleys, pitifully groan!
Rivers and Dorian springs, for Bion weep!
Ye plants drop tears; ye groves, lamenting moan!
Exhale your life, wan flowers; your blushes deep
In grief, anemones and roses, steep;
In whimpering murmurs, Hyacinth! prolong
The sad, sad woe thy lettered petals keep;
Our minstrel sings no more his friends among—
Sicilian Muses! now begin the doleful song.

Ye nightingales! that mid thick leaves set loose
The gushing gurgle of your sorrow, tell
The fountains of Sicilian Arethuse
That Bion is no more—with Bion fell
The song—the music of the Dorian shell.
Ye swans of Strymon! now your banks along
Your plaintive throats with melting dirges swell
For him, who sang like you the mournful song;
Discourse of Bion's death the Thracian nymphs among—

The Dorian Orpheus, tell them all, is dead.
His herds the song and darling herdsman miss,
And oaks, beneath whose shade he propt his head;
Oblivion's ditty now he sings for Dis;
The melancholy mountain silent is;
His pining cows no longer wish to feed,
But moan for him; Apollo wept, I wis,
For thee, sweet Bion! and in mourning weed
The brotherhood of Fauns, and all the Satyr breed.

The tears by Naiads shed are brimful bourns;
Afflicted Pan thy stifled music rues;
Lorn Echo 'mid her rocks thy silence mourns,
Nor with her mimic tones thy voice renews;
The flowers their bloom, the trees their fruitage lose;
No more their milk the drooping ewes supply;
The bees to press their honey now refuse;
What need to gather it and lay it by,
When thy own honey-lip, my Bion! thine is dry?

Sicilian Muses! lead the doleful chant;
Not so much near the shore the dolphin moans;
Nor so much wails within her rocky haunt
The nightingale; nor on their mountain thrones
The swallows utter such lugubrious tones;
Nor Cëyx such for faithful Halcyon,
Whose song the blue wave, where he perished, owns;
Nor in the valley, neighbor to the sun,
The funeral birds so wail their Memnon's tomb upon—

As these moan, wail, and weep for Bion dead,
The nightingales and swallows, whom he taught,
For him their elegiac sadness shed;
And all the birds contagious sorrow caught;
The sylvan realm was all with grief distraught.
Who, bold of heart, will play on Bion's reed,
Fresh from his lip, yet with his breathing fraught?
For still among the reeds does Echo feed
On Bion's minstrelsy. Pan only may succeed

To Bion's pipe; to him I make the gift;
But, lest he second seem, e'en Pan may fear
The pipe of Bion to his mouth to lift.
For thee sweet Galatea drops the tear,
And thy dear song regrets, which sitting near
She fondly listed; ever did she flee
The Cyclops and his songs—but ah! more dear
Thy song and sight than her own native sea;
On the deserted sands the nymph without her fee

Now sits and weeps, or weeping tends thy herd.
Away with Bion all the muse-gifts flew—
The chirping kisses breathed at every word:
Around thy tomb the Loves their playmate rue;
Thee Cypris loved—more than the kiss she drew,
And breathed upon her dying paramour.
Most musical of rivers! now renew
Thy plaintive murmurs; Meles! now deplore
Another son of song—as thou didst wail of yore

That sweet, sweet mouth of dear Calliope;
The threne, 'tis said, thy waves for Homer spun,
With saddest music filled the refluent sea;
Now melting wail and weep another son!
Both loved of fountains; that of Helicon
Gave Melesigenes his pleasant draught;
But to his Arethuse did Bion run,
And from her urn the glowing rapture quaffed:
Thy elder glory sung how Helen bloomed and laughed;

On Thetis' mighty son his descant ran
And Menelaus; but our Bion chose
Not arms and tears to sing, but Love and Pan;
While browsed his herd, his gushing music rose;
He milked his kine; did pipes of reeds compose;
Taught how to kiss; and fondled in his breast
Young Love, and Cypris pleased. For Bion flows
In every glorious land a grief confest;
Ascra for her own bard, wise Hesiod, less exprest;

Bœotian Hylæ mourned for Pindar less;
Teös regretted less her minstrel hoar,
And Mitylene her sweet poetess;
Nor for Alcæus Lesbos suffered more;
Nor lovely Paros so much did deplore
Her own Archilochus. Breathing her fire
Into her sons of song, from shore to shore
For thee the pastoral Muse attunes her lyre
To woeful utterance of passionate desire.

Sicelidas, the famous Samian star,
And he with smiling eye and radiant face,
Cydonian Lycidas, renowned afar,
Lament thee; where quick Hales runs his race
Philetas wails; Theocritus, the grace
Of Syracuse, thee mourns; nor these among
Am I remiss Ausonian wreaths to place
Around thy tomb; to me doth it belong
To chant for thee, from whom I learnt the Dorian song;

Me with thy minstrel skill as proper heir—
Others thou didst endow with thine estate.
Alas! alas! when in a garden fair
Mallows, crisp dill, and parsley yield to fate,
These with another year regerminate;
But when of mortal life the bloom and crown,
The wise, the good, the valiant, and the great
Succumb to death, in hollow earth shut down,
We sleep, for ever sleep—for ever lie unknown.

Thus art thou squeezed, while frogs may croak at will;
I envy not their croak. Thee poison slew—
How kept it in thy mouth its nature ill?
If thou didst speak, what cruel wretch could brew
The draught? He did of course thy song eschew.
But Justice all o'ertakes. My tears fast flow
For thee, my friend. Could I, like Orpheus true,
Odysseus or Alcides, pass below
To gloomy Tartarus, how quickly would I go!

To see, and hear thee, haply, sing for Dis;
But in the nymph's ear warble evermore,
O dearest friend! thy sweetest harmonies
For whilom, on her own Etnëan shore,
She sang wild snatches of the Dorian lore.
Nor will thy singing unrewarded be;
Thee to thy mountain-haunts she will restore,
As she gave Orpheus his Eurydice.
Could I charm Dis with songs, I too would sing for thee.