MELIBŒUS.
Tell me, good gossip, I pray, what led you to visit the city?
TITYRUS.
Liberty! which on a day regarded my lot with compassion;
My age and distresses, forsooth, compelled that proud mistress to pity,
That had snubbed the attentions of youth in most reprehensible fashion.
Oh, happy, thrice happy, the day when the cold Galatea forsook me;
And equally happy, I say, the hour when that other girl took me!
MELIBŒUS (slyly, as if addressing the damsel).
So now, Amaryllis, the truth of your ill-disguised grief I discover!
You pined for a favorite youth with cityfied damsels hobnobbing;
And soon your surroundings partook of your grief for your recusant lover,—
The pine-trees, the copse and the brook, for Tityrus ever went sobbing.
TITYRUS.
Melibœus, what else could I do? Fate doled me no morsel of pity;
My toil was all vain the year through, no matter how earnest or clever,
Till, at last, came that god among men, that king from that wonderful city,
And quoth: "Take your homesteads again; they are yours and your assigns forever!"
MELIBŒUS.
Happy, oh, happy old man! rich in what 's better than money,—
Rich in contentment, you can gather sweet peace by mere listening;
Bees with soft murmurings go hither and thither for honey,
Cattle all gratefully low in pastures where fountains are glistening—
Hark! in the shade of that rock the pruner with singing rejoices,—
The dove in the elm and the flock of wood-pigeons hoarsely repining,
The plash of the sacred cascade,—ah, restful, indeed, are these voices,
Tityrus, all in the shade of your wide-spreading beech-tree reclining!