Page:The Greek bucolic poets (1912).djvu/43

Rh No, no, man; there’s no piping for me at high noon. I go in too great dread of Pan for that. I wot high noon’s his time for taking rest after the swink o’ the chase; and he’s one o’ the tetchy sort; his nostril’s ever sour wrath’s abiding-place. But for singing, you, Thyrsis, used to sing The Affliction of Daphnis as well as any man; you are no ’prentice in the art of country-music. So let’s come and sit yonder beneath the elm, this way, over against Priapus and the fountain—goddesses, where that shepherd’s seat is and those oak-trees. And if you but sing as you sang that day in the match with Chromis of Libya, I’ll not only grant you three milkings of a twinner goat that for all her two young yields two pailfuls, but I’ll give you a fine great mazer to boot, well scoured with sweet beeswax, and of two lugs, bran—span-new and the smack of the graver upon it yet.

The lip of it is hanged about with curling ivy, ivy freaked with a cassidony which goes twisting and twining among the leaves in the pride of her saffron fruitage. And within this bordure there’s a woman, fashioned as a God might fashion her, lapped in a robe and a snood about her head. And either side the woman a swain with fair and flowing locks, and they bandy words the one with the other. Yet her heart is not touched by aught they say; for now ’tis a laughing glance to this, and anon a handful of regard to that, and for all their eyes have been so long hollow for love of Rh