Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/26

18 shafts. As the vine adorns her tree, as her grapes the vine; as bulls the herds, as corn the rich fields; so thou art all the ornament of thy people; since the Fates reft thee, Pales and Apollo themselves have left the country desolate. In the furrows where we often have bestowed the large barley, fruitless darnel and barren wild oats spring: instead of soft violet and shining narcissus rises the thistle and the thorn with his keen spines. Strew the ground with leaves, train shade over the springs, O shepherds: Daphnis bids such remembrance be done to him; and pile a mound, and over the mound add a verse: I am Daphnis the forester, known from here even to the heavens, keeper of a fair flock, myself more fair than they.

Me.—Such is thy song unto us, O divine poet, as sleep to the weary on the grass, as quenching of thirst in the heat from a gushing rivulet of sweet water. Nor on the reeds alone, but with voice too, thou equallest thy master: happy boy, thou shalt now be next to him. Yet we in turn will sing thee these songs of ours even as best we may, and raise thy Daphnis into the sky: we will ensky thy Daphnis, for us also Daphnis loved.

Mo.—And might aught be higher in our eyes than such a gift? Both the boy himself was worthy the singing, and these verses of thine Stimicon long since commended to us.

Me.—Clad in light, Daphnis marvels at Heaven's untrodden floor and sees the clouds and the stars beneath his feet. Therefore gay pleasure reigns in the forest and all the countryside, among Pan