Preluding with the plectrum, and there went
Up from beneath his hand a tumult sweet
Of mighty sounds, and from his lips he sent
A strain of unpremeditated wit,
Joyous and wild and wanton—such you may
Hear among revellers on a holiday.”
When he has sung enough and is “seized with a sudden fancy for fresh meat,” he hurries off to the shadowed hills of Pieria and steals fifty of the lowing kine which are feeding there on flowering, unmown meadows. Cunningly reversing their tracks, and making for himself sandals of twigs and leaves that will not betray him, he drives the cattle to the river Alpheus in Arcadia, by whose banks they munch lotus and marsh-marigold. He kills and cooks with lusty appetite, in the serene moonshine, and then at dawn, through a silence broken by no step of god or man nor bark of dog, he goes back to the crests of Cyllene and enters the cave, through the hole of the bolt,—
“Like a thin mist or an autumnal blast.”
Meantime Apollo, the Far-darter, has been tracking him from the Thessalian meadows. To the fragrant Cyllenian hill he comes where sheep are peacefully grazing, and finds the little thief wrapped once more in swaddling bands, feet, head and hands curled into a small space, tortoise shell clasped under his baby arm.
“Latona’s offspring, after having sought