IDYL III. LAMENT FOR BION. YE mountain valleys, pitifully groan ! In softest murmurs, Hyacinth! prolong Ye nightingales, that 'mid thick leaves let loose 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; 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; 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 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; 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: For thee sweet Galatea drops the tear, And thy dear song regrets, which sitting near The Cyclops and his song; but far more dear Now sits and weeps, or weeping tends thy herd. The chirping kisses breathed at every word: Thy plaintive murmurs: Meles! now deplore That sweet, sweet mouth of dear Calliope: To this sweet Arethuse did Bion run, And from her urn the glowing rapture quaft : Blest was the bard who sang how Helen bloomed and laught: DD On Thetis' mighty son his descant ran, Not arms and tears to sing, but Love and Pan; Ascra for her own bard, wise Hesiod, less exprest: Baotian Hylæ mourned for Pindar less ; Nor for Alcæus Lesbos suffered more; Sicelidas, the famous Samian star, And he with smiling eye and radiant face, Lament thee; where quick Hales runs his race, |