Of tourney touched his adversary's shield

In token of defiance, but in sign Of homage to the mastery, which is thine,

In English song; nor will I keep concealed,

And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed,

My admiration for thy verse divine. Not of the howling dervishes of song, Who craze the brain with their delirious dance,

Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart!

Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong,

To thee our love and our allegiance, For thy allegiance to the poet's art.

VIRGIL'S FIRST ECLOGUE.

MELIBUS.

TITYRUS, thou in the shade of a spreading beech-tree reclining, Meditatest, with slender pipe, the Muse of the woodlands.

We our country's bounds and pleasant pastures relinquish,

We our country fly; thou, Tityrus, stretched in the shadow, Teachest the woods to resound with the name of the fair Amaryllis.

TITYRUS.

O Melibœus, a god for us this leisure created,

For he will be unto me a god forever; his altar

Oftentimes shall imbue a tender lamb from our sheepfolds.

He, my heifers to wander at large, and myself, as thou seest,

On my rustic reed to play what I will, hath permitted.

MELIBUS.

Truly I envy not, I marvel rather

all sides

; on

In all the fields is such trouble. Behold,
my goats I am driving,
Heartsick, further away; this one scarce,
Tityrus, lead I;

For having here yeaned twins just now
among the dense hazels,
Hope of the flock, ah me! on the naked
flint she hath left them.

Often this evil to me, if my mind had not been insensate,

Oak-trees stricken by heaven predicted, as now I remember; Often the sinister crow from the hollow ilex predicted. Nevertheless, who this god may be, o Tityrus, tell me.

TITYRUS.

O Melibœus, the city that they call
Rome, I imagined,
Foolish I to be like this of ours, where
often we shepherds

year, Melibus,

During twice six days ascends the smoke of our altars.

Here first gave he response to me solicit

ing favor:

"Feed as before your heifers, ye boys, and yoke up your bullocks."

MELIBUS.

Fortunate old man! So then thy fields
I will be left thee,
And large enough for thee, though naked
stone and the marish

All thy pasture-lands with the dreggy
rush may encompass.
No unaccustomed food thy gravid ewes
shall endanger,

Nor of the neighboring flock the dire contagion infect them. Fortunate old man! Here among familiar rivers,

And these sacred founts, shalt thou take the shadowy coolness.

On this side, a hedge along the neighboring cross-road,

Where Hyblæan bees ever feed on the flower of the willow, Often with gentle susurrus to fall asleep shall persuade thee. Yonder, beneath the high rock, the pruner shall sing to the breezes, Nor meanwhile shall thy heart's delight,

the hoarse wood-pigeons, Nor the turtle-dove cease to mourn from

aerial elm-trees.

TITYRUS.

Therefore the agile stags shall sooner feed in the ether,

And the billows leave the fishes bare on the sea-shore,

Sooner, the border-lands of both overpassed, shall the exiled Parthian drink of the Soane, or the German drink of the Tigris, Than the face of him shall glide away from my bosom !

MELIBUS.

But we hence shall go, a part to the thirsty Africs,

Part to Scythia come, and the rapid Cretan Oaxes,

And to the Britons from all the universe utterly sundered.

bounds of my country

And the roof of my lowly cottage covered with greensward

Seeing, with wonder behold,

- my kingdoms, a handful of wheat-ears! Shall an impious soldier possess these lands newly cultured,

And these fields of corn a barbarian ? Lo, whither discord

Us wretched people hath brought for whom our fields we have planted! Graft, Melibus, thy pear-trees now, put in order thy vineyards.

Go, Never again henceforth outstretched in my verdurous cavern

my goats, go hence, my flocks so happy aforetime.

Shall I behold you afar from the bushy precipice hanging.

Songs no more shall I sing; not with me, ye goats, as your shepherd, Shall ye browse on the bitter willow or blooming laburnum.

TITYRUS.

Nevertheless, this night together with me canst thou rest thee Here on the verdant leaves; for us there are mellowing apples, Chestnuts soft to the touch, and clouted cream in abundance;

And the high roofs now of the villages

smoke in the distance, And from the lofty mountains are falling larger the shadows.

OVID IN EXILE,

AT TOMIS, IN BESSARABIA, NEAR THE MOUTHS OF THE DANUBE.

TRISTIA, Book III., Elegy X. SHOULD any one there in Rome remember Övid the exile,

And, without me, my name still in the city survive;

Tell him that under stars which never set in the ocean

I am existing still, here in a barbarous land.

Fierce Sarmatians encompass me round, and the Bessi and Getæ ; Names how unworthy to be sung by a genius like mine!