Every one must feel the image to be burlesque, and even Dryden's authority cannot recommend it.
[13] The scene of this Pastoral a valley, the time the morning. It stood originally thus,
Daphnis and Strephon to the shades retired,
Both warmed by love, and by the muse inspired,
Fresh as the morn, and as the season fair,
In flow'ry vales they fed their fleecy care;
And while Aurora gilds the mountain's side,
Thus Daphnis spoke, and Strephon thus replied.—Pope.
There was in the manuscript a still earlier, and perhaps better, version of the first two lines:
Daphnis and Strephon led their flocks along,
Both famed for love and both renowned in song.
They were however borrowed from Lycon, an Eclogue, in the fifth part of Tonson's Miscellany:
Strephon and Damon's flocks together fed,
Both famed for wit, and famed for beauty both.
Wakefield points out that the opening verse of the couplet, as it stands in the text, was indebted to Congreve's Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas:
When woolly flocks their bleating cries renew,
And from their fleecy sides first shake the silver dew.
[14] The epithet "whitening" most happily describes the progressive effect of the light.—Wakefield.