TRANSLATION OF THE EPITAPHIUM
BY CHARLES SYMMONS, D.D. JESUS COLL. OXON., 1806.
DAMON, AN EPITAPHIAL ELEGY.
YE nymphs of Himera (whose stream along
The notes have floated of your mournful song,
As Daphnis or as Hylas you deplored,
Or Bion, once the shepherds' tuneful lord;)
Lend your Sicilian softness to proclaim
The woes of Thyrsis on the banks of Thame;
What plaints he murmured to the springs and floods,
How waked the sorrowing echoes of the woods,
As frantic for his Damon lost, alone
He roamed, and taught the sleepless night to groan.
Twice the green blade had bristled on the plain,
And twice the golden ear enriched the swain,
Since Damon by a doom too strict expired,
And his pale eye his absent friend required.
For Thyrsis still his wished return delayed;
The Muses held him in the Tuscan shade.
But when with satiate taste and careful thought
His long-forgotten home and flock he sought,
Ah! then, beneath the accustomed elm reclined,
All-all his loss came rushing to his mind.
Undone and desolate, for transient ease
He poured his swelling heart in strains like these:
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost!
What powers shall I of earth or heaven invoke,
Since Damon fell by their relentless stroke?
And shalt thou leave us thus? and shall thy worth
Sleep in a nameless grave with common earth?
But he whose wand the realms of death controls
Forbids thy shade to blend with common souls.
While these o'erawed disperse at his command,
He leads thee to thy own distinguished band.
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost!
And sure, unless beneath some evil eye,
That blights me with its glance, my powers should die,
Thou shalt not slumber on thy timeless bier
'Without the meed of one melodious tear.'
Long shall thy name, thy virtues long remain
In fond memorial with the shepherd train;
Their festive honours and their votive lay
To thee, as to their Daphnis, they shall pay,—
Their Daphnis thou, as long as Pales loves
The springing meads, or Faunus haunts the groves;
If aught of power or faith and truth attend,
Palladian science and a Muse thy friend.
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost!
Yes, Damon, thee such recompenses wait.—
But ah! what ills hang gloomy o'er my fate?
Who now, still faithful to my side, will bear
Keen frosts or suns that parch the sickening air,
When boldly, to protect the distant fold,
We seek the growling savage in his hold?
Who now, as we retrace the long rough way,
With tale or song will soothe the weary day?
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost!
To whom my bosom shall I now confide?
At whose soft voice will now my cares subside?
Who now will cheat the night with harmless mirth,
As the nut crackles on the glowing hearth,
Or the pear hisses,-while without the storm
Roars through the wood and ruffles nature's form?
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost!
In summer too, at noontide's sultry hour,
When Pan lies sleeping in his beechen bower;
When diving from the day's oppressive heat
The panting Naiad seeks her crystal seat ;
When every shepherd leaves the silent plain,
And the green hedge protects the snoring swain ;
Whose playful fancy then shall light the smile?
Whose Attic tongue relieve my languid toil?
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost!
Ah! now through meads and vales alone I stray,
Or linger sad where woods embrown the day;
As drives the storm, and Eurus o'er my head
Breaks the loose twilight of the billowy shade.
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost!
My late trim fields their laboured culture scorn,
And idle weeds insult my drooping corn;
My widowed vine in prone dishonour sees
Her clusters wither;—not a shrub can please.
E'en my sheep tire me ; they with upward eyes
Gaze at my grief, and seem to feel my sighs.
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost!
My shepherd friends, by various tastes inclined,
Direct my steps the sweetest spot to find.
This likes the hazel, that the beechen grove ;
One bids me here, one there for pleasure rove.
Aegon the willow's pensile shade delights,
And gay Amyntas to the streams invites.
'Here are cool fountains; here is mossy grass;
'Here zephyrs softly whisper as they pass.
'From this light spring yon arbute draws her green,
"The pride and beauty of the sylvan scene.'
Deaf is my woe, and while they speak in vain,
I plunge into the copse and hide my pain.
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost!
Mopsus surprised me in my sullen mood,
(Mopsus who knew the language of the wood;
Knew all the stars, could all their junctions spell.)
And thus ;-'What passions in your bosom swell?
'Speak! flows the poison from disastrous love?
'Or falls the mischief star-sent from above?
'For leaden Saturn, with his chill control,
'Oft has shot blights into the shepherd's soul.'
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost!
The wandering nymphs exclaim-'What, Thyrsis, now? 115 'Those heavy eyelids and that cloudy brow "Become not youth; to youth the jocund song, 'Frolic and dance and wanton wiles belong. 'With these he courts the joys that suit his state; ‘Ah ! twice unhappy he who loves too late!'
How blest where, none repulsed and none preferred,
One common friendship blends the lowing herd!
Touched by no subtle magnet in the mind,
Each meets a comrade when he meets his kind.
He soon repairs his loss and finds a like.
But we, by Fate's severer frown oppressed,
With war and sharp repulsion in the breast,
Can scarcely meet amid the human throng
One kindred soul, or met preserve him long.
When fortune, now determined to be kind,
Yields the rich gift, and mind is linked to mind,
Death mocks the fond possession, bursts the chain,
And plants the bosom with perennial pain.
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost :
Alas! what madness tempted me to stray
Where other suns on distant regions play?
To tread aerial paths and Alpine snows,
Scared by stern Nature's terrible repose?
Ah! could the sepulchre of buried Rome
Thus urge my frantic foot to spurn my home?
Though Rome were now, as once in pomp arrayed
She drew the Mantuan from his flock and shade;
Ah! could she lure me from thy faithful side,
Lead me where rocks would part us, floods divide,
Forests and lofty mountains intervene,
Whole realms extend and oceans roar between?
Ah, wretch denied to press thy fainting hand,
Close thy dim eyes and catch thy last command ;
To say My friend, O think of all our love,
'And bear it glowing to the realms above!'
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost!
Yet must I not deplore the hours that flew,
Ye Tuscan swains, with science and with you ;-
'Each Grace and Muse is yours,'—and yours my Damon too.
From ancient Lucca's Tuscan walls he came,
With you in country, talents, arts the same.
How happy, lulled by Arno's warbling stream,
Hid by his poplars from day's flaring beam,
When stretched along the fragrant moss I lay,
And culled the violet or plucked the bay;
Or heard, contending for the rural prize,
Famed Lycid's and Menalcas' melodies.
I too essayed to sing, nor vainly sung ;
This flute, these baskets speak my victor tongue-
And Datis and Francinus, swains who trace
Their Tuscan lineage to the Lydian race,
Dear to the Muses both, with friendly care
Taught their carved trees my favoured name to bear.
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost!
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