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summer days, I remember, I used to send to their grave with singing as a boy, and now all my store of songs is forgotten. Nay, Moris' voice is taking leave of him too; wolves have set eyes on Moeris first. But what you want you can hear repeated often enough by Menalcas.

L. All your put-offs only make my longing greater. Besides, just now the sea is all laid and hushed to hear you, and every breath of murmuring wind, as you may see, has fallen dead. Here we are just half-way, for the tomb of Bianor is becoming visible; here, where the husbandmen are lopping those thick leaves; here, Moris, let us stop and sing; here put your kids down; we shall get to the town for all that; or, if we are afraid that night will get up a shower first, there is nothing to hinder our singing-it makes the journey hurt less—as we go right on. So now, that we may sing as we go, I will relieve of this load of yours..

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M. Press me no more, my boy; let us think only of what is before us; the songs we shall have a better voice for when we see him with us again.

ECLOGUE X.

GALLUS.

This my last effort, Arethusa, do thou vouchsafe me. A song for my Gallus, brief, yet such as may win even Lycoris' ear, I have to sing-who would refuse a song to Gallus? If, as thou glidest under the Sicilian billows, thou wouldest not have the salt goddess of Ocean mingle her waters with thine, begin the lay; let its theme be Gallus' vexing passion, while. the silly flat-nosed goats are browsing on the growing brakes. Our songs are not to deaf ears: every note is echoed by the woods.

What forests, what lawns were your abode, virgin nymphs of the fountains, when Gallus was wasting under an unworthy passion? What indeed for it was not any spot in the ridges of Parnassus or of Pindus that kept you there; no, nor Aonian Aganippe. Yet over him even the bays, even the tamarisks shed their tears; over him as he lay under the lonely rock even the pine-crowned head of Mænalus shed a tear, and the dull stones of cold Lycæus. There, too, standing about him are his sheep; they are not ashamed of humanity, nor do thou be ashamed of thy flock, heavenly poet as thou art; even Adonis in his beauty once fed sheep by the water. Up came the shepherd too: slowly up came the swineherds; dripping from the winter's mast up came Menalcas. Every mouth cries,

Whence this passion of thine? Up came Apollo-Gallus, says he, why be a madman? thy heart's queen, Lycoris, has braved the snow and the savage life of camps to follow another. Up, too, came Silvanus with his woodland honours green on his brow, nodding his fennels in bloom and his giant lilies. Pan came, Arcadia's own god; him we saw with our own eyes, crimsoned all over with blood-red elderberries and vermilion. Is there ever to be an end of this? he cries. As for Love, such things move him not. Tears will no more sate Love's cruelty than sluices will your grass, or lucerne your bees, or fodder your goats. His answer came with a sighYou will sing of me though, Arcadians, when I am gone, in the ears of your mountains; none know how to sing but Arcadians. O how soft a sleep would my bones enjoy, could I but feel that a pipe of yours one day would tell of my passion! Nay, indeed, would that I had been one of you myself—the shepherd of a flock of yours, or the dresser of those full ripe grapes! Then at least, whether it had been Phyllis, or Amyntas, or any other love; and what if Amyntas be brown? violets are dark too and so are hyacinths dark-I should have

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had them ever by my side, among the willows, under the limber vine; Phyllis plucking me flowers for a wreath, Amyntas singing. See, here are cold springs and soft meadows, Lycoris, and a forest of trees; here I could wear away with thee by mere lapse of time. And now this mad passion for the savage war-god is keeping me here in arms, with weapons all about me and enemies drawn up before me, while thou, far away from thy native land would it were not mine to believe the tale-art looking with those cruel, cruel eyes on the Alpine snows and the frost-bound Rhine, alone without me at thy side. Oh! may the frost forbear to harm thee! may the sharp ice be kept from wounding thy tender feet! I will be gone, and set the strains which I have framed in the measure of Chalcis to the reed of the Sicilian shepherd. Sure am I that it will be better to bear my fate in the woods, with the dens of wild beasts round me, and engrave my love on the young growing trees; they will shoot up, and my love will shoot up with them. Meantime I will scour Mænalus along with the nymphs, or have a hunt of fierce boars. No stress of winter shall keep me from besetting with my hounds the lawns of mount Parthenius. Yes, I can see myself already on the move over rocks or amid the cry of the woods; I feel the pleasure of winging shafts of Cydon from a bow of Parthia, as though this were a medicine for madness like mine, or that tyrant god would ever learn compassion for human suffering! It is gone-wood nymphs have no charm for me now, nor songs either. Woodlands, I must part from you, too, now. He is a god whom no endurance of ours can change. No, not if in midwinter we were to drink the waters of Hebrus, or submit ourselves to the snows of Sithonia and its sleety cold. All are conquered by Love; and let us, too, yield ourselves Love's captives.

Let thus much suffice, Goddesses, for your poet's song,

sung as he sits and weaves a basket of slender willow. Goddesses of Pieria, you will enhance its worth to the highest in Gallus's eyes,-Gallus, the love of whom grows on me hour by hour as fast as the green alder shoots up from the earth when the spring is new. Now let us rise; there is apt to be danger to singers in the shade; danger in the juniper's shade, and crops too suffer from shade. Home with you, such a meal as you have eaten. Hesper is coming, home with you, my goats.

THE GEORGICS.

BOOK L

WHAT makes a corn-field smile; what star suits best for turning up the soil, and marrying the vine to the elm; what care oxen need; what is the method of breeding cattle; and what weight of men's experience preserves the frugal commonwealth of bees: such is the song I now essay. Brightest lights of the world, that guide the year's smooth course through heaven: father Liber and mother Ceres; if it was by your bounty that Earth changed the acorn of Chaonia for the plump well-favoured corn-ear, and found the grape wherewith to temper her draught of Achelous: you too, Fauns, the countryman's propitious deities, trip hither in time, Fauns and Dryad maidens, I sing of your bounty too and thou, for whom Earth first teemed forth the fiery horse under the stroke of thy mighty trident, Neptune; and thou, dresser of woods and groves, to pleasure whom Ceos' luxuriant brakes, are browsed by three hundred snow-white bullocks; come thou, too, in thy power, from thy forest home and the Lycæan lawns, Pan, tender of sheep, by the love thou bearest thy Mænalus, O stand graciously at my side, god of Tegea; and thou, Minerva, who foundest the olive for man; and thou, blessed youth, who showedst him the crooked plough; and

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