Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/255

 THE REAPERS

BATTUS (sings).

"Sing with me, O Pierian Muses, the lass that is lissome;

For ye make all things fair, whatever ye touch, ye Divine Ones!

"Graceful Bombýcê, they call you a Syrian, scrawny and sunburnt,—

All but me, who alone pronounce you the color of honey.

"Ay, and the violet's dark, and the hyacinth wearing its letters:

None the less, for all that, are they sorted first in the garlands.

"She-goats hunt tor the clover, the wolf goes after the she-goat,

After the plough the crane,—but I've gone raving for you, love!

"Would that mine were as much as Crœsus, they say, was possessed of;

Then should we twain, in gold, be set up before Aphrodite;

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