Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/30

22 steer. Ah hapless maiden, what frenzy hath hold of thee? Proetus' daughters filled the fields with counterfeited lowings, but yet none of them pursued such inhuman and shameful union, though her neck had shuddered as from the plough and she often had sought for horns on her smooth forehead. Ah hapless maiden, thou now wanderest on the hills: he, resting his snowy side on soft hyacinth blooms, under a black ilex munches the pale grass, or follows one among the vast herd. Bar, O Nymphs, Nymphs of Crete, bar now the forest glades, if haply that steer's wandering foot-prints may somewhere meet our eyes; peradventure he, either lured by green herbage or following the herds, may come home on the cows' track to the yards of Gortyna. Then he sings of the maiden's marvel at the apples of the Hesperides: then enrings Phaethon's sisters with moss on bitter bark, and makes them spring tall in alder from the ground. Then he sings how as Gallus strayed by the streams of Permessus, one of the sisterhood led him to Aonian hills, and how before him all the choir of Phoebus rose up; how Linus the divine shepherd-singer, with blossoms and bitter parsley twined in his hair, spoke thus to him: These pipes, see, take them! the Muses give thee, the same they once gave the old man of Ascra; wherewith he was wont, singing, to draw down stubborn ash trees from the hills. On these be told by thee the birth of the Grynean forest, that there be no grove in which Apollo shall pride himself more. Why should I tell his