Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/257

HYLAS "Reapers, begin your toil when the tuft-lark soars from the meadow:

Cease when he sleeps: besides, in the heat of the day take your leisure.

"Give me a frog's life, boys! he needs, to pour out his tipple,

No cup-bearer, not he, for't is up to his mouth all around him.

"Better to boil the lentil, you'll find it, niggardly steward:

Ware lest you cut your hand in making two halves of a cummin."

HYLAS

Not for ourselves alone the God, who fathered that stripling

Erôs, begat him, Nicias, as we have flattered us: neither

Unto ourselves the first have beauties seemed to be beauties,—

Not unto us, who are mortal and do not foresee the morrow;

But that heart of brass, Amphitryôn's son, who awaited

Stoutly the ruthless lion, he too was fond of a youth once—

Graceful, the lad with the curling locks,—and he taught him

All fair things, as a father would teach the child of his bosom,

All which himself had learned, and great and renowned in song grown;

Nor was he ever at all apart from him, neither at mid-day, 227