PASTORAL VIII.[300]
OR,
PHARMACEUTRIA.
ARGUMENT.
This Pastoral contains the Songs of Damon and Alphesibœus. The first of them bewails the loss of his mistress, and repines at the success of his rival Mopsus. The other repeats the charms of some enchantress, who endeavoured, by her spells and magic, to make Daphnis in love with her.
The mournful muse of two despairing swains,
The love rejected, and the lovers' pains;
To which the savage lynxes listening stood,
The rivers stood on heaps, and stopped the running flood;
The hungry herd the needful food refuse—
Of two despairing swains, I sing the mournful muse.
Great Pollio! thou, for whom thy Rome prepares
The ready triumph of thy finished wars,
Whether Timavus or the Illyrian coast,
Whatever land or sea, thy presence boast;
Is there an hour in fate reserved for me,
To sing thy deeds in numbers worthy thee?
In numbers like to thine, could I rehearse
Thy lofty tragic scenes, thy laboured verse,
The world another Sophocles in thee,
Another Homer should behold in me.
Amidst thy laurels let this ivy twine:
Thine was my earliest muse; my latest shall be thine.
Scarce from the world the shades of night withdrew,
Scarce were the flocks refreshed with morning dew,
When Damon, stretched beneath an olive shade,
And, wildly staring upwards, thus inveighed
Against the conscious gods, and cursed the cruel maid:
"Star of the morning, why dost thou delay?
Come, Lucifer, drive on the lagging day,
While I my Nisa's perjured faith deplore,—
Witness, ye powers, by whom she falsely swore!
The gods, alas! are witnesses in vain;
Yet shall my dying breath to heaven complain.
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.
"The pines of Mænalus, the vocal grove,
Are ever full of verse, and full of love:
They hear the hinds, they hear their god complain,
Who suffered not the reeds to rise in vain
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.