Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/25

ll. 1–31.] cavern the woodland wild vine scatters her thin clusters.

Me.—On our hills Amyntas alone may contend with thee.

Mo.—What if he even contend to excel Phoebus in song?

Me.—Begin, O Mopsus, first, if thou hast aught of flames for Phyllis or praises of Alcon or flouts at Codrus. Begin: Tityrus will keep the grazing kids.

Mo.—Nay, the songs I have newly written down on green beech bark and marked the music between the lines, these will I essay: thou thereafter bid Amyntas enter the contest.

Me.—Even as the pliant osier yields to the grey olive, as the low scented reed to the crimson rose-plots, so far by our judgment Amyntas yields to thee.

Mo.—But cease thou further, O boy: we have reached the cavern.

Dead Daphnis cruelly slain the Nymphs wept; you, O hazels and rivers, were the Nymphs' witnesses; while clasping her son's wretched corse, his mother calls on gods and stars that pity not. None in those days, Daphnis, drove the pastured oxen to cool streams; no four-footed thing tasted the river nor touched the grassy sward. Daphnis, the wild hills and the woodlands repeat how even Punic lions bemoaned thy decease. Daphnis ordered the harnessing of Armenian tigresses to the car; Daphnis the processions of Bacchus' revellers and the soft leafage wound round their supple Rh