20

The shepherds came. The lazy herdsmen came.
Came, from the winter acorns dripping-wet,
Menalcas. "Whence," all ask, "this love of thine?"
Apollo came: and, "Art thou mad," he saith,
"Gallus? Thy love, through bristling camps and

snows,

Tracks now another's steps." Silvanus came,
Crowned with his woodland glories: to and fro
Rocked the great lilies and the fennel bloom.
Pan came, Arcadia's Pan: (I have seen him, red
With elder-berries and with cinnabar:)
"Is there no end?" quoth he: "Love heeds not this:
Tears sate not cruel Love: nor rills the leas, 30
Nor the bees clover, nor green boughs the goat.
But he rejoins sad-faced: "Yet sing this song
Upon your hills, Arcadians! none but ye
Can sing. Oh! pleasantly will rest my bones,
If pipe of yours shall one day tell my loves.
Oh! had I been as you are! kept your flocks,
Or gleaned, a vintager, your mellow grapes!
A Phyllis, an Amyntas-whom you will—
Had been my passion-what if he be dark?
Violets are dark and hyacinths are dark.-

40

And now should we be sitting side by side,
Willows around us and a vine o'erhead,

He carolling, or plucking garlands she.

-Here are cold springs, Lycoris, and soft lawns, And woods with thee I'd here decay and die. Now, for grim war accoutred, all for love,

In the fray's centre I await the foe:

Thou, in a far land-out the very thought!—
Gazest (ah wilful!) upon Alpine snows

And the froz'n Rhine-without me-all alone! 50
May that frost harm not thee! that jaggèd ice
Cut ne'er thy dainty feet! I'll go, and play
My stores of music-fashioned for the lyre
Of Chalcis-on the pipe of Arcady.

My choice is made. In woods, mid wild beasts' dens,

I'll bear my love, and carve it on the trees:
That with their growth, my loves may grow and

grow.

Banded with nymphs I'll roam o'er Mænalus,
Or hunt swift boars; and circle with my dogs,
Unrecking of the cold, Parthenia's glades.

Already over crag and ringing grove

I am borne in fancy: laugh as I let loose

60

The Cretan arrow from the Parthian bow:

Pooh! will this heal thy madness? will that god Learn mercy from the agonies of men?

'Tis past: again nymphs, music, fail to please. Again I bid the very woods begone.

No deed of mine can change him: tho' I drink Hebrus in mid December: tho' I plunge

In snows of Thrace, the dripping winter's snows: 70 Tho', when the parched bark dies on the tall elm, 'Neath Cancer's star I tend the Ethiop's sheep. Love 's lord of all. Let me too yield to Love.

-Sung are, oh holy ones, your minstrel's songs: Who sits here framing pipes with slender reed. In Gallus' eyes will ye enhance their worth: Gallus for whom each hour my passion grows, As swell green alders when the spring is young. I rise. The shadows are the singer's bane: Baneful the shadow of the juniper.

F'en the flocks like not shadow. Go-the star

Of morning breaks-go home, my full-fed sheep.

80

NOTE ON ECLOGUE III. 78, 79.

Putting the vocative "Iolla" in line 79, as Mr Kennedy does, into the mouth of Menalcas, not of Phyllis, I would substitute these lines for my original

ones:

Phillis is my dear love. She wept when I—
(Yes I, Iollas,)-left her: and "Good-bye",
She said, "Iollas fair; a long Good-bye".

FROM HORACE'S ODES.