Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/14

6 brought us! lo, for whose profit we have sown our fields! Engraft thy pear trees now, Meliboeus, set thy vines arow! Go, my she-goats, go, once happy flock: never hereafter shall I, stretched in a green cave, see you afar hanging from the tufted rock: no songs shall I sing; not in my herding shall you, my she-goats, crop the flowering cytisus and bitter willows.

T.—Yet here for to-night thou mightst rest with me on green boughs: we have mellow apples and soft chestnuts, and curdled milk in abundance; and already afar the farm roofs smoke, and the shadows fall larger from the high hills.

 

The shepherd Corydon burned for fair Alexis, his master's darling, and found no hope: only among the thick shady-topped beeches he would continually come, and there alone utter in idle passion these artless words to the hills and woods.

O cruel Alexis, carest thou naught for my songs? hast no pity on us? thou wilt be my death at the last. Now even the cattle woo the shade and coolness, now even the green lizards hide in the thorn brakes; and Thestylis is bruising garlic and wild thyme, strong-smelling herbs for the mowers wearied with the fierce heat: but for all my company, as I trace thy footsteps, the copses ring with crickets jarring under the blazing