Page:The Greek bucolic poets (1912).djvu/351

Rh whole and complete with all her branching roots; and so forth and made for those parts where the lion was. Whither when I was come, I took and tipped my string, and straightway notched a bearer of pain and grief, and fell a-looking this way and that way after the pestilent monster, if so be I might espy him ere he should espy me. ’Twas midday now, yet could I nowhere mark his track nor hear his roaring; neither was there any man set over a plough-team and the toil 0f the seed-furrow that I could see and ask of him, seeing pale wan fear kept every man at the farmstead. Howbeit, I never gave over to search the leafy uplands till I should behold him and put my strength speedily to the test.

Now towards evening he came his ways unto his den full fed both of ﬂesh and gore, his tangled mane, his grim visage and all his chest spattered with blood, and his tongue licking his chaps. To waylay him I hid myself quickly in a brake beside the woody path, and when he came near let ﬂy at his left ﬂank. But it availed me not; the barbed shaft could not pass the ﬂesh,but glanced and fell on the fresh green sward. Astonied, the beast lift suddenly up his gory head, and looked about him and about, opening his mouth and showing his gluttonous teeth; whereupon I sped another shaft from the string (for I took it ill that the ﬁrst had left my hand to no purpose), and smote him clean in the middle of the chest where Rh