Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/36

28 wet with dew: the next year after eleven had just received me: I could just reach the brittle branches from the ground. As I saw, how I perished, how the fatal craze swept me away!

Begin with me, my flute, the verses of Maenalus.

Now I know what Love is: on iron flints of Tmaros or Rhodope or the utmost Garamants is he born, no child of our kin or blood.

Begin with me, my flute, the verses of Maenalus.

Fierce Love taught the mother to dabble her hands with her children's blood: cruel thou too, O mother! Crueller the mother or the boy insatiate? insatiate the boy; cruel thou too, O mother!

Begin with me, my flute, the verses of Maenalus.

Now even let the wolf flee unchased before the sheep; let gnarled oaks bear apples of gold: let the alder flower into narcissus, and rich amber ooze from tamarisk bark: yes, let screech-owls vie with swans, let Tityrus be Orpheus, Orpheus in the forest, Arion among the dolphin shoals—

Begin with me, my flute, the verses of Maenalus.

Even let mid-ocean cover all. Farewell, O woodlands! from my watchtower aloft on the hill I will plunge headlong into the waves: keep thou this my last gift as I die.

Cease, O flute, cease now the verses of Maenalus.

Thus Damon: you, maidens of Pieria, tell of Alphesiboeus' reply: we cannot all do everything.

Fetch water forth, and twine the altars here with the soft fillet, and bum resinous twigs and male frankincense, that I may try by magic rites