Philetus 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 chaunt 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, or parsley yields 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 pent, 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 haply hear thee sing for Dis!
But in the Nymph's ear warble evermore,
My dearest friend! thy sweetest harmonies:
For whilom, on her own Etnean 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.

IDYL IV.

MEGARA.

"WHY dost thou vex thy spirit, mother mine?

Why fades thy cheek? at what dost thou repine? Because thy son must serve a popinjay,

As though a lion did a fawn obey?

Why have the gods so much dishonoured me?
Why was I born to such a destiny?

Spouse of a man I cherished as mine eyes,
For whom heart-deep my vowed affection lies,
Yet must I see him crossed by adverse fate,
Of mortal men the most misfortunate!
Who with the arrows, which Apollo-no!
Some Fate or Fury did on him bestow,
In his own house his own sons raging slew-
Where in the house was not the purple dew?

I saw them slain by him; I-I, their mother,
Did see their father slaughter them; none other
Had e'er a dream like this; to me they cried,
'Mother! save us!' what could I do? they died.
As when a bird bewails her callow young,
O'er whom, unfeathered yet, she fondly hung,
Which now a fierce snake in the bush devours-

Flies round and round-shrieks

cowers,

cannot help them—

Nor nearer dares approach her cruel foe:

Thus I, most wretched mother! to and fro

Rushed madly through the house, my children dear,
My dead, dead children wailing everywhere.
Would that I too had with my children died,
The poisoned arrow sticking in my side!
Then with fast tears my mother and my sire
Had laid me with them on the funeral pyre;
And to my birth-land given, on their return,
Our mingled ashes in one golden urn :

But they in Thebes, renowned for steeds, remain,
And still they farm their old Aonian plain;
But in steep Tiryns I must dwell apart,

With many sorrows gnawing at my heart;

Mine eyes are fountains, which I cannot close;
I seldom see him, and but brief repose
My hapless husband is allowed at home;
By sea or land he must for ever roam;
None but a heart of iron, or of stone,
Could bear the labours he has undergone.
Thou, too, like water, meltest still away,
For ever weeping every night and day.
None of
my kin is here to comfort me,

For they beyond the piny isthmus be;

There's none, to whom I may pour out my woes,

And like a woman all my heart disclose,

But sister Pyrrha;—but she too forlorn

For her Iphicles, thine and her's doth mourn;
Unhappiest mother thou! in either son—
Twin stamps of Zeus, and of Amphitryon."

And while she spoke, from either tearful well

The large drops faster on her bosom fell,

While she her slaughtered children called to mind,

And parents in her country left behind.

With tear-stained cheek, and many a groan and sigh,

Alcmena to her son's wife made reply —