IDYL III.

AMARYLLIS,

I Go to serenade my charming fair,
Sweet Amaryllis; Tityrus, to your care
I leave my goats, that on the mountain feed;
But of yon Libyan tawny ram take heed,
Lest with his horn he butt you; careful tend,
And to the fountain drive them, heart-dear friend!

Sweet Amaryllis! why dost thou no more,
Peeping from out thy cavern as before,
Espy and call to thee thy little lover?

Dost hate me? or do I myself discover

Flat-nosed, or with a length of chin, when near? Thy scorn will make me hang myself, I swear. Behold, ten apples, nymph! I bring for thee, Plucked from the place where thou didst order me

To pluck them; others will I bring to-morrow.
Consider now my heart-devouring sorrow:

O! that I were a little humming bee,

Το pass thro' fern and ivy in to thee,

Where in thy cave thou dost thyself conceal! a grievous god to feel;

I now know love

He surely sucked a savage lioness,

Reared in the wild, who works me such distress, Eating into the marrow of the bone.

O sweet in aspect! altogether stone!

Nymph! with thine eye-brows of a raven hue,
Clasp me, that I may suck the honey-dew
From off thy lip: mere kisses yield some joy.
Now wilt thou make me the sweet crown destroy,
This wreath of ivy which for thee I brought,
With rose-buds and with parsley sweet inwrought.
Ah me! what shall I do? I plead in vain
Thou hearest not: I'll plunge into the main,
My jerkin stript, where Olpis sits on high,
Watching the tunnies. Should I even die,
'Twill please thee. This the sign I lately found,
For the struck pop-bell gave me back no sound,
(When by that proof thy doubtful love I tried)
But withering on my elbow shrunk and dried.

Agræo, the diviner by the sieve,

Forewarned me also what I now believe,

(Binding the sheaves, the reapers followed she,)
That I loved wholly one who loved not me.
A white twin-bearing goat, which the brunette,
Old Memnon's child, Erithacis would get
By wheedling from me, I have kept as thine;
But since thou scornest me with airs so fine,
It shall be hers. A throbbing, I declare,
In my right eye-shall I behold my fair?
My ditty, leaning on this pine, I'll chant;
She'll haply look, since she's not adamant.

When in the race, mistrustful of his knees, To win the virgin ran Hippomenes; Three golden apples in his hand he took, And Atalanta could not help but look She saw, and maddened instant at the sight, And rushed into the gulf of love outright. The seer Melampus from Mount Othrys drove The stolen herd to Pylos. Thence did Love His brother Bias crown - for in his arms Alphesibæa's mother lodged her charms.

Did not Adonis, the fair shepherd youth,

So madden Cypris that for very ruth,

E'en when she had received his dying gasp,

She could not bear to loose him from her clasp?
Thrice blest, methinks, was that Endymion,
Now laid asleep; thrice blest läsion,

Who in his life did those sweet joys obtain,

Of which ye must not, shall not hear, profane!

How my head aches! my anguish doth not move thee; I'll sing no more, and since in vain I love thee, Here will I lie-me here the wolves shall eat; 'Twill be to thee like melting honey sweet.