Along this tract swift ships their courses keep, What pasture here? what sweet drink in the brine? Nor sea-born dolphins roam the flowery mead, To her the horned bull with accent clear :- Dear Crete, that nursed me, now shall welcome thee; In Crete Europa's nuptial rites shall be; From our embrace illustrious sons shall spring, And every one of them a sceptred king." And instantly they were in Crete his own Form Zeus put on and off her virgin zone. Strowed the glad bed the Hours, of joy profuse; The whilom virgin was the bride of Zeus. IDYL III. LAMENT FOR BION. YE mountain valleys, pitifully groan ! Ye plants drop tears! ye groves lamenting moan! In softest murmurs, Hyacinth! prolong Ye nightingales, that 'mid thick leaves let loose The gushing gurgle of your sorrow, tell The fountains of Sicilian Arethuse That Bion is no more with Bion fell The song, the music of the Dorian shell. Ye swans of Strymon now your banks along Your plaintive throats with melting dirges swell For him who sang like you the mournful song: Discourse of Bion's death the Thracian nymphs among ; The Dorian Orpheus, tell them all, is dead. His herds the song and darling herdsman miss, The melancholy mountain silent is; For thee, sweet Bion! and in mourning weed The tears by Naiads shed are brimful bourns; Afflicted Pan thy stifled music rues; Lorn Echo mid her rocks thy silence mourns, Nor with her mimic tones thy voice renews; No more their milk the drooping ewes supply; What need to gather it and lay it by, When thy own honey-lip, my Bion! thine is dry? Sicilian muses! lead the doleful chaunt: Not so much near the shore the dolphin moans; Nor so much Ceyx wailed for Halcyon, Whose song the blue wave, where he perished, owns ; Nor in the valley, neighbour to the sun, The funeral birds so wail their Memnon's tomb upon As these moan, wail, and weep, their Bion dead. And all the birds contagious sorrow caught; To Bion's pipe; to him I make the gift: For thee sweet Galatea drops the tear, |