From Idyl

Goat-herd, how sweet above the lucid springThe high pines wave with breezy murmuring!So sweet thy song, whose music might succeedTo the wild melodies of Pan's own reed.

He left us;--we, the hour of parting come,To Prasidamus' hospitable home,Myself and Eucritus, together wend,With young Amynticus, our blooming friend:There, all delighted, through the summer day,On beds of rushes, pillowed deep, we lay;Around, the lentils, newly cut, were spread;Dark elms and poplars whispered o'er our head;A hallowed stream, to all the wood-nymphs dear,Fresh from the rocky cavern murmured near;Beneath the fruit-leaves' many-mantling shade,The grasshoppers a coil incessant made;From the wild thorny thickets, heard remote,The wood-lark trilled his far-resounding note;Loud sung the thrush, musician of the scene,And soft and sweet was heard the dove's sad note between;Then yellow bees, whose murmur soothed the ear,Went idly flitting round the fountain clear.Summer and Autumn seemed at once to meet,Filling with redolence the blest retreat,While the ripe pear came rolling to our feet.

When the famed Argo now secure had passedThe crushing rocks, and that terrific straitThat guards the wintry Pontic, the tall shipReached wild Bebrycia's shores; bearing like godsHer god-descended chiefs. They, from her sides,With scaling steps descend, and on the shore,Savage, and sad, and beat by ocean winds,Strewed their rough beds, and on the casual fireThe vessels place. The brothers, by themselves,CASTOR and red-haired POLLUX, wander farInto the forest solitudes. A woodImmense and dark, shagging the mountain side,Before them rose; a cold and sparkling fountWelled with perpetual lapse, beneath its feet,Of purest water clear; scattering below,Streams as of silver and of crystal rose,Bright from the bottom: Pines, of stateliest height,Poplar, and plane, and cypress, branching wide,Were near, thick bordered by the scented flowersThat lured the honeyed bee, when spring declines,Thick swarming o'er the meadows. There all dayA huge man sat, of savage, wild aspect;His breast stood roundly forward, his broad backSeemed as of iron, such as might befitA vast Colossus sculptured. Full to viewThe muscles of his brawny shoulders stood,Like the round mountain-stones the torrent waveHas polished; from his neck and back hung downA lion's skin, held by its claws. Him firstThe red-haired youth addressed: Hail, stranger, hail,And say, what tribes unknown inhabit here!Take to the seas thy Hail: I ask it not,Who never saw before, or thee, or thine.Courage! thou seest not men that are unjustOr cruel.Courage shall I learn from thee!Thy heart is savage; thou art passion's slave.Such as I am thou seest; but land of thineI tread not.Come, these hospitable giftsAccept, and part in peace.No: not from thee.My gifts are yet in store.Say, may we drinkOf this clear fount?Ask, when wan thirst has parchedThy lips.What present shall I give to thee?None. Stand before me as a man; lift highThy brandished arms, and try, weak pugilist,Thy strength.But say, with whom shall I contend?Thou seest him here; nor in his art unskilled.Then what shall be the prize of him who wins?Or thou shalt be my slave, or I be thine.The crested birds so fight.Whether like birdsOr lions, for no other prize fight we!He said: and sounded loud his hollow conch;The gaunt Bebrycian brethren, at the sound,With long lank hair, come flocking to the shadeOf that vast plain.Then Castor hied, and calledThe hero chiefs from the Magnesian ship.