Page:Masterpieces of Greek Literature (1902).djvu/257

227 A LC EST IS ^^1

And pipe, adown the winding hill-side paths,

Pastoral maiTiage-poems to thy flocks

At feed : while with them fed in fellowship,

Through joy i' the music, spot-skin lynxes ; ay,

And lions too, the bloody company, 910

Came, leaving Othrus' dell ; ^ and round thy lyre,

Phoibos, there danced the speckle-coated fawn.

Pacing on lightsome fetlock past the pines

Tress-topped, the creature's natural boundary.

Into the open everywhere ; such heart as

Had she within her, beating joyous beats,

At the sweet reassurance of thy song !

Therefore the lot o' the master is, to live

In a home multitudinous with herds.

Along by the fair-flowing Boibian lake,^ 920

Limited, that ploughed land and pasture-plain.

Only where stand the sun's steeds, stabled west

I' the cloud, by that mid-air which makes the clime

Of those Molossoi : ^ and he rules as well

O'er the Aigaian,"* up to Pelion's shore, — 925

Sea-stretch without a port ! Such lord have we :

And here he opens house now, as of old.

Takes to the heart of it a guest again :

Though moist the eyelid of the master, still

Mourning his dear wife's body, dead but now ! " 930

They ended, for A dmetos entered tiow ; 940

Having disposed all duteously indoors. . ..

He woidd have hidden the hind iiresence there 950

Observe that, — since the corpse was coming out.

Cared for in all things that hefit the case.

Carried aloft, in decency and state,

^ In Tliessaly. 2 Jn Thessaly.

3 A people of Epirus, near to Thessaly. * The Aegean Sea.