THE SAME

BY PROFESSOR MASSON, 1873.-REPRINTED FROM HIS LIFE OF MILTON,' VOL. II. p. 85.

ON THE DEATH OF DAMON.

The Argument.

THYRSIS and DAMON, shepherds of the same neighbourhood, following the same pursuits, were friends from their boyhood, in the highest degree of mutual attachment. Thyrsis, having set out to travel for mental improvement, received news when abroad of Damon's death. Afterwards at length returning, and finding the matter to be so, he deplores himself and his solitary condition in the following poem. Under the guise of Damon, however, is here understood Charles Diodati, tracing his descent on the father's side from the Tuscan city of Lucca, but otherwise English-a youth remarkable, while he lived, for his genius, his learning, and other most shining virtues.

NYMPHS of old Himera's stream (for ye it was that remembered Daphnis and Hylas when dead, and grieved for the sad fate of Bion), Tell through the hamlets of Thames this later Sicilian story— What were the cries and murmurs that burst from Thyrsis the wretched,

What lamentations continued he wrung from the caves and the rivers,

Wrung from the wandering brooks and the grove's most secret

rccesses,

Mourning his Damon lost, and compelling even the midnight

Into the sound of his woe, as he wandered in desolate places. Twice had the ears in the wheat-fields shot through the green of their sheathing,

As many crops of pale gold were the reapers counting as garnered, Since the last day that had taken Damon down from the living,

Thyrsis not being by; for then that shepherd was absent,
Kept by the Muse's sweet love in the far-famed town of the Tuscan.
But, when his satiate mind, and the care of his flock recollected,
Brought him back to his home, and he sat, as of old, 'neath the
elm-tree,

Then at last, O then, as the sense of his loss comes upon him,
Thus he begins to disburthen all his measureless sorrow :-

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Ah me! what deities now shall I call on in earth or in heaven,
After the pitiless death by which they have reft thee, my Damon?
Thus dost thou leave us? thus without name is thy virtue departed
Down to the world below, to take rank with the shadows unnoted?
No! May He that disparteth souls with his glittering baton
Will it not so, but lead thee into some band of the worthies,
Driving far from thy side all the mere herd of the voiceless!

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Hap as it may, unless the wolf's black glance shall first cross me, Not in a tearless tomb shall thy loved mortality moulder;

Stand shall thine honour for thee, and long henceforth shall it flourish

Mid our shepherd lads; and thee they shall joy to remember
Next after Daphnis chief, next after Daphnis to praise thee,

So long as Pales and Faunus shall love our fields and our meadows,

If it avails to have cherished the faith of the old and the loyal,
Pallas's arts of peace, and have had a tuneful companion !

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Kept are these honours for thee, and thine they shall be, my
Damon !

But for myself what remains? For me what faithful companion
Now will cling to my side, in the place of the one so familiar,
All through the season harsh when the grounds are crisp with the
snow-crust,

Or 'neath the blazing sun when the herbage is dying for moisture?
Were it the task to go forth in the track of the ravaging lions,
Or to drive back from the folds the wolf-packs boldened by hunger,
Who would now lighten the day with the sound of his talk or his
singing?

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Whom shall I trust with my thoughts; or who will teach me to deaden

Heart-hid pains; or who will cheat away the long evening

Sweetly with chat by the fire, where hissing hot on the ashes Roasts the ripe pear, and the chestnuts crackle beneath, while the South-wind

Hurls confusion without, and thunders down on the elm-tops?

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Then, in the summer, when day spins round on his middlemost axle, What time Pan takes his sleep concealed in the shade of the beeches,

And when the nymphs have repaired to their well-known grots in the rivers,

Shepherds are not to be seen and under the hedge snores the rustic, Who will bring me again thy blandishing ways and thy laughter, All thy Athenian jests, and all the fine wit of thy fancies?

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Now all lonely I wander over the fields and the pastures,

Or where the branchy shades are densest down in the valleys; There I wait till late, while the shower and the storm-blast above me Moan at their will, and sighings shake through the breaks of the woodlands.

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Ah! how my fields, once neat, are now overgrown and unsightly, Forward only in weeds, and the tall corn sickens with mildew! Mateless, my vines droop down the shrivelled weight of their clusters;

Neither please me my myrtles; and even the sheep are a trouble; They seem sad, and they turn their faces, poor things, to their master! Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Tityrus calls to the hazels; to the ash-trees Alphesibœus ;

Ægon suggests the willows: 'The streams,' says lovely Amyntas; 'Here are the cool springs, here the moss-broidered grass and the hillocks;

'Here are the zephyrs, and here the arbutus whispers the ripple.'

These things they sing to the deaf; so I took to the thickets and left them.

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Mopsus addressed me next, for he had espied me returning

(Wise in the language of birds, and wise in the stars too, is Mopsus):

'Thyrsis,' he said, 'what is this? what bilious humour afflicts thee? Either love is the cause, or the blast of some star inauspicious; 'Saturn's star is of all the oftenest deadly to shepherds, 'Fixing deep in the breast his slant leaden shaft of sickness.'

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Round me fair maids wonder; 'What will come of thee, Thyrsis? 'What wouldst thou have?' they say: 'not commonly see we the

young men

'Wearing that cloud on the brow, the eyes thus stern and the visage:

'Youth seeks the dance and sports, and in all will tend to be

wooing :

'Rightfully so: twice wretched is he who is late in his loving.'

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Dryope came, and Hyas, and Ægle, the daughter of Baucis (Learned is she in the song and the lute, but O what a proud

one !);

Came to me Chloris also, the maid from the banks of the Chelmer. Nothing their blandishings move me, nothing their prattle of comfort;

Nothing the present can move me, nor any hope of the future.

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Ah me! how like one another the herds frisk over the meadows,
All by the law of their kind, companions equally common;
No one selecting for friendship this one rather than that one
Out of the flock! So come in droves to their feeding the jackals;
So in their turns pair also the rough untameable zebras.
Such too the law of the deep, where Proteus down on the shingle
Numbers his troops of sea-calves. Nay, that meanest of wing'd

ones,

See how the sparrow has always near him a fellow, when flying

Round by the barns he chirrups, but seeks his own thatch ere it darkens ;

Whom should fate strike lifeless-whether the beak of the falcon
Pin him in air, or he lie transfixed by the reed of the ditcher-
Quick the survivor is off, and a moment finds him remated.
We are the hard race, we, the battered children of fortune,
We of the breed of men, strange-minded and different-moulded !
Scarcely does any discover his one true mate among thousands;
Or, if kindlier chance shall have given the singular blessing,
Comes a dark day on the creep, and comes the hour unexpected,
Snatching away the gift, and leaving the anguish eternal.

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Ah! what roaming whimsy drew my steps to a distance,

Over the rocks hung in air and the Alpine passes and glaciers! Was it so needful for me to have seen old Rome in her ruins— Even though Rome had been such as, erst in the days of her

greatness,

Tityrus, only to visit, forsook both his flocks and his country-
That but for this I consented to lack the use of thy presence,
Placing so many seas and so many mountains between us,
So many woods and rocks and so many murmuring rivers?
Ah! at the end at least to have touched his hand had been given
me,

Closed his beautiful eyes in the placid hour of his dying,

Said to my friend, 'Farewell! in the world of the stars think of me!' Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.

Albeit also of you my memory never shall weary,

Swains of the Tuscan land, well-practised youths in the Muses,
Here there was grace and lightness; Tuscan thou too, my Damon,
Tracing the line of thy race from the ancient city of Lucca !
O, how mighty was I, when, stretched by the stream of the Arno
Murmuring cool, and where the poplar-grove softens the herbage,
Violets now I would pluck, and now the sprigs of the myrtle,
Hearing Menalcas and Lycidas vying the while in their ditties!
I also dared the challenge; nor, as I reckon, the hearers
Greatly disliked my trials—for yet the tokens are with me,
Rush-plaits, osier nets, and reed-stops of wax, which they gave me.
Ay more: two of the group have taught our name to their beech-

woods