MENALCAS. What though I am not wretched by your scorn? Say, beauteous boy, say can I cease to mourn, If, while I hold the nets, the boar you face, And rashly brave the dangers of the chase. DAMETAS. Send Phyllis home, Iolas, for to-day I celebrate my birth, and all is gay; When for my crop the victim I prepare, Iolas in our festival may share. MENALCAS. Phyllis I love; she more than all can charm, And mutual fires her gentle bosom warm: Tears, when I leave her, bathe her beauteous eyes, "A long, a long adieu, my love!" she cries. DAMETAS. The wolf is dreadful to the woolly train; Fatal to harvests is the crushing rain; To the green woods the winds destructive prove; To me the rage of mine offended love. MENALCAS. The willow's grateful to the pregnant ewes, Showers to the corn, to kids the mountain-brows; More grateful far to me my lovely boyIn sweet Amyntas centres all my joy. DAMETAS. Even Pollio deigns to hear my rural lays, And cheers the bashful Muse with generous praise; Ye sacred Nine, for your great patron feed A beauteous heifer of the noblest breed. MENALCAS. Pollio the art of heavenly song adorns; Then let a bull be bred with butting horns, And ample front, that bellowing spurns the ground, Tears up the turf, and throws the sands around. DAMETAS. Him whom my Pollio loves may naught annoy; May he, like Pollio, every wish enjoy! Oh, may his happy lands with honey flow, MENALCAS. Who hates not foolish Bavius, let him love Thee, Mævius, and thy tasteless rhymes approve! Nor needs it thy admirer's reason shock To milk the he-goats, and the foxes yoke. DAMCETAS. Ye boys, on garlands who employ your care, And pull the creeping strawberries, beware; Fly for your lives, and leave that fatal place, A deadly snake lies lurking in the grass. MENALCAS. Forbear, my flocks, and warily proceed, Nor on that faithless bank securely tread; The heedless ram late plunged amid the pool, And in the sun now dries his reeking wool. DAMETAS. Ho, Tityrus! lead back the browsing flock, MENALCAS. Haste, from the sultry lawn the flocks remove When burning noon the curdling udder dries, DAMETAS. How lean my bull in yonder mead appears, Though the fat soil the richest pasture bears! Ah, Love! thou reign'st supreme in every heart, Both flocks and shepherds languish with thy dart. MENALCAS. Love has not injured my consumptive flocks, Yet bare their bones, and faded are their looks: What envious eye hath squinted on my dams, And sent its poison to my tender lambs! DAMETAS. Say in what distant land the eye descries But three short ells of all th' expanded skies: Tell this, and great Apollo be your name; Your skill is equal, equal be your fame. MENALCAS. Say in what soil a wondrous flower is born, PALÆMON. 'Tis not for me these high disputes to end; Each to the heifer justly may pretend. Such be their fortune, who so well can sing, From love what painful joys, what pleasing torments spring. Now, boys, obstruct the course of yonder rill, PASTORAL IV.* POLLIO. SICILIAN Muse, sublimer strains inspire, The age comes on, that future age of gold In this fourth pastoral, no particular landscape is delineated. The whole is a prophetic song of triumph. But as almost all the images and allusions | are of the rural kind, it is no less a true bucolic than the others; if we admit the definition of a pastoral given us by an author of the first rank,* who calls it "a poem in which any action or passion is represented by its effects upon country life." It is of little importance to inquire on what occasion this poem was written. The spirit of prophetic enthusiasm that breathes through it, and the resem. blance it bears in many places to the Oriental manner, make it not improbable that our poet composed it partly from some pieces of ancient prophecy that might have fallen into his hands, and that he afterwards inscribed it to his friend and patron Pollio, on the occasion of the birth of his son Saloninus. • The author of "The Rambler,” This child, the joy of nations, shall be born The son with heroes and with gods shall shine, But graze innoxious with the friendly herd. Sprung from thy cradle fragrant flowers shall spread, And, fanning bland, shall wave around thy head. No deadly herb the happy soil disgrace : But when thy father's deeds thy youth shall fire, And to great actions all thy soul inspire, When thou shalt read of heroes and of kings, |