Along this tract swift ships their courses keep,
But bulls are wont to fear the mighty deep.

What pasture here? what sweet drink in the brine?
Art thou a god? thy doings seem divine.

Nor sea-born dolphins roam the flowery mead,
Nor earth-born bulls thro' Ocean's realm proceed;
Fearless on land, and plunging from the shores
Thou roamest ocean, and thy hoofs are oars.
Perchance anon, up-borne into the sky,
Thou without wings like winged birds wilt fly!
Ah me unhappy! who my father's home
Have left and with a bull o'er ocean roam,
A lonely voyager! my helper be,
Earth-shaking Regent of the hoary sea!
I hope to see this voyage's cause and guide,
For not without a god these things betide."

To her the horned bull with accent clear :-
"Take courage, virgin! nor the billow fear;
The seeming bull is Zeus; for I with ease
Can take at will whatever form I please;
My fond desire for thy sweet beauty gave
To me this shape-my footstep to the wave.

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 !
Rivers and Dorian springs for Bion weep!

Ye plants drop tears! ye groves lamenting moan!
Exhale your life, wan flowers; your blushes deep
In grief, anemonies and roses, steep!

In softest murmurs, Hyacinth! prolong
The sad, sad woe thy lettered petals keep;
Our minstrel sings no more his friends among-
Sicilian Muses! now begin the doleful song.

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,
And oaks, beneath whose shade he propt his head :
Oblivion's ditty now he sings for Dis :

The melancholy mountain silent is;
His pining cows no longer wish to feed,
But mourn for him: Apollo wept, I wis,

For thee, sweet Bion! and in mourning weed
The brotherhood of Fauns, and all the Satyr breed.

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;
The flowers their bloom, the trees their fruitage lose;

No more their milk the drooping ewes supply;
The bees to press their honey now refuse;

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 wails within her rocky haunt
The nightingale; nor on their mountain thrones
The swallows utter such lugubrious tones;

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.
The nightingales and swallows, whom he taught,
For him their elegiac sadness shed;

And all the birds contagious sorrow caught;
The sylvan realm was all with grief distraught.
Who bold of heart will play on Bion's reed,
Fresh from his lip, yet with his breathing fraught?
For still among the reeds does Echo feed
On Bion's minstrelsy. Pan only may succeed

To Bion's pipe; to him I make the gift:
But lest he second seem, e'en Pan may fear
The pipe of Bion to his mouth to lift.

For thee sweet Galatea drops the tear,