Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/28

20 Me.—First shall this brittle hemlock-pipe be our gift to thee: the pipe that taught us Corydon burned for fair Alexis, and withal ''Who is the flock's master? Meliboeus?''

Mo.—But take thou the crook that, often as he besought it, Antigenes got not of me, and then he was worth loving, beautiful with ranged studs of brass, O Menalcas.

 

First our Thalia deigned to dally with the verse of Syracuse, nor blushed to dwell in the woodland. When I was singing of kings and battles, the Cynthian twitched my ear and counselled me: A shepherd, Tityrus, should feed fat sheep but utter a slender song. Now will I—for thou wilt have many who long to utter thy praises, Varus, and to chronicle dreadful wars—brood on my slim pipe over the Muse of the country. Yet if one, if one there be to read this also for love of it, of thee, O Varus, our tamarisks, of thee all the forest shall sing; nor is any page dearer to Phoebus than that which writes in front of it Varus' name.

Proceed, maidens of Pieria. The boys Chromis and Mnasylos saw Silenus lying asleep in a cavern, his veins swollen as ever with the wine of yesterday: just apart lay the garlands slid from his head, and the heavy wine-jar hung by its worn handle. Falling on him, for often the old man had mocked them both with expectation of a song, they fetter