Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/39

ll. 89–109.] Forbear: from the city, forbear now, my songs, Daphnis comes.

 

L.—Whither footest thou, Moeris? leads thy way townward?

M.—O Lycidas, we live to have come to this, what we never feared, that an intruder in our little fields should say. These are mine; hence with you, old freeholders! Now crushed and sorrowing, since all goes with Fortune's wheel, these kids (small joy may he have thereof!) we are sending to him.

L.—Surely I had heard that, where the hills begin to retire and lower their ridge in a soft slope, even to the waterside and the old beeches that now moulder atop, your Menalcas had saved all the land by his songs.

M.—You had; and so rumour ran. But songs of ours, Lycidas, have no more power among warring arms than Chaonian doves, as they say, when the eagle comes. Had not a raven from the hollow ilex on my left forewarned me to cut short my young suit as best I could, neither thy Moeris nor Menalcas himself were alive and here.

L.—Alas! can such wickedness come over any one? alas for thee and our comfort in thee,