Mid thickets vast no soul my strains would heed:
Not even Pan on that far-distant shore
Would lend his vacant ear, or be my solace more.
Juvenal in his Twelfth Satire (l. 37-42.) describes a merchant overtaken by a dreadful storm, and to save the ship throwing his most valuable goods into the sea. It will be observed, that the poet attributes the excellence and fine natural color of the woollen cloth of Bætica to three causes, the rich herbage, the occult properties of the water, and those of the air.
“Over with mine,” he cries; “be nothing spar’d;”
To part with all his richest goods prepar’d;
His vests of Tyrian purple, fit to please
The softest of the silken sons of ease,
And other robes, which took a native stain
From air and water on the Bætic plain.