Ye pastoral Muses, farewell! Bring ye into the light the song that I sang there to these shepherds on that day! Never let the pimple grow on my tongue-tip. [53]
Cicala to cicala is dear, and ant to ant, and hawks to hawks, but to me the Muse and song. Of song may all my dwelling be full, for sleep is not more sweet, nor sudden spring, nor flowers are more delicious to the bees—so dear to me are the Muses. [54] Whom they look on in happy hour, Circe hath never harmed with her enchanted potion.
IDYL X
THE REAPERS
This is an idyl of the same genre as Idyl IV. The sturdy reaper, Milon, as he levels the swathes of corn, derides his languid and love-worn companion, Buttus. The latter defends his gipsy love in verses which have been the keynote of much later poetry, and which echo in the fourth book of Lucretius, and in the Misanthrope of Molière. Milon replies with the song of Lityerses—a string, apparently, of popular rural couplets, such as Theocritus may have heard chanted in the fields.
Milan. Thou toilsome clod; what ails thee now, thou wretched fellow? Canst thou neither cut thy swathe straight, as thou wert wont to do, nor keep time with thy neighbour in thy reaping, but thou must fall out, like an ewe that is foot-pricked with a thorn and straggles from the herd? What manner of man wilt thou prove after mid-noon, and at evening, thou that dost not prosper with thy swathe when thou art fresh begun?
Battus. Milon, thou that canst toil till late, thou chip of the stubborn stone, has it never befallen thee to long for one that was not with thee?
Milan. Never! What has a labouring man to do with hankering after what he has not got?
Battus. Then it never befell thee to lie awake for love?
Milan. Forbid it; ’tis an ill thing to let the dog once taste of pudding.
Battus. But I, Milon, am in love for almost eleven days!