Then was the boy as glad,—and leaped high, and clapped his hands over his victory,—as a young fawn leaps about his mother. But the heart of the other was wasted with grief, and desolate, even as a maiden sorrows that is newly wed.
From this time Daphnis became the foremost among the shepherds, and while yet in his earliest youth, he wedded the nymph Nais.
IDYL IX
Daphnis and Menalcas, at the bidding of the poet, sing the joys of the neatherds and of the shepherds life. Both receive the thanks of the poet, and rustic prizes—a staff and a horn, made of a spiral shell. Doubts have been expressed as to the authenticity of the prelude and concluding verses. The latter breathe all Theocritus’s enthusiastic love of song.
Sing, Daphnis, a pastoral lay, do thou first begin the song, the song begin, O Daphnis; but let Menalcas join in the strain, when ye have mated the heifers and their calves, the barren kine and the bulls. Let them all pasture together, let them wander in the coppice, but never leave the herd. Chant thou for me, first, and on the other side let Menalcas reply.
Daphnis. Ah, sweetly lows the calf, and sweetly the heifer, sweetly sounds the neatherd with his pipe, and sweetly also I! My bed of leaves is strown by the cool water, and thereon are heaped fair skins from the white calves that were all browsing upon the arbutus, on a time, when the south-west wind dashed me them from the height.
And thus I heed no more the scorching summer, than a lover cares to heed the words of father or of mother.
So Daphnis sang to me, and thus, in turn, did Menalcas sing.
Menalcas. Aetna, mother mine, I too dwell in a beautiful cavern in the chamber of the rock, and, lo, all the wealth have I that we behold in dreams; ewes in plenty and she-goats abundant, their fleeces are strown beneath my head and feet. In the fire of oak-faggots puddings are hissing-hot, and dry beech-nuts roast therein, in the wintry weather, and, truly, for the winter season I care not even so much as a toothless man does for walnuts, when rich pottage is beside him.
Then I clapped my hands in their honour, and instantly gave each a gift, to Daphnis a staff that grew in my father’s close, self-shapen, yet so straight, that perchance even a craftsman could have found no fault in it. To the other I gave a goodly spiral shell, the meat that filled it once I had eaten after stalking the fish on the Icarian rocks (I cut it into five shares for five of us),—and Menalcas blew a blast on the shell.