ECLOGUE X. GALLUS.

THIS, my last effort, Arethuse, to me
Allow: verses a few to Gallus mine,
But which Lycoris may herself peruse,
Are to be sung: who verses will deny
To Gallus? So along with thee, when thou
Shalt underneath Sicilian surges glide,

May bitter Doris not her billow blend:
Begin; sing we of Gallus' carking loves,

While flat-nosed she-goats nibble tender shrubs.
We sing not to the deaf: respeak the forests all.

What lawns or what glades held you, Naiad maids,

When with unworthy passion Gallus pined?

For neither unto you Parnassus' brows,
For neither any of Pindus caused delay,
Nor the Aonian Aganippe. Him
Even the bays, e'en tamarisks bewept ;
Him, as he lay beneath a lonely cliff,

Line 2. See note on Geo. iv. 7, 8.

6. See note on En. iii. 978.

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11. There is a marked resemblance between this Eclogue and Milton's Lycidas; but how immeasurably the English has distanced the Latin poet, must be obvious to any one who can divest himself of prejudice:

"Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep

Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?

For neither were ye playing on the steep,

Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,

Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high," &c.

E'en pine-fraught Mænalus and Lycæus' rocks,
Ice-cold, bewept. The sheep, too, stand around;
(They neither are ashamed of us; nor thou
Be of the flock ashamed, O heavenly bard:

Yea, fair Adonis sheep by rivers fed ;)

And came the shepherd; plodding swineherds came ;
Wet from the winter mast, Menalcas came.

All ask, "Whence comes this passion unto thee?"
Apollo came: "O Gallus, why dost rave?"

Quoth he: "Lycoris, thy solicitude,

Another, both through snows and through dread camps,
Hath followed." Came eke, with a rural pride

Of head, Silvanus, blooming fennel-plants
And giant lilies tossing to and fro.

Pan came, Arcadia's god; whom we ourselves
Beheld with berries of dwarf-elder bloody red,
And with vermilion flushing. "Will there be
Any bound?" saith he: "Love recks not of the like.
Neither by tears relentless Love, nor grass

By rills, nor bees by cytisus are cloyed,

Line 19. So Pope, Past. 2:

"Soft as he mourn'd the streams forgot to flow,

The flocks around a dumb compassion show."

"There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture."-Shakspeare, Winter's Tale, v. 2.

This whole account of Gallus brings to mind the melancholy youth in Gray's Elegy:

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech,

That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

Hard by you wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Mutt'ring his wayward fancies, would he rove;

Now drooping, woful, wan, like one forlorn,

Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love."
VOL. I.

F

Nor by the leaf she-goats." But sad quoth he:
"Yet ye will sing, O Arcads, to your mounts
These strains; in singing Arcads skilled alone.
Oh! then how softly might my bones repose,
Should your reed-pipe hereafter celebrate
My loves! And would that I were one of you,
And had been either keeper of your flock,
Or vintager of your enripened bunch!
Surely, had either Phyllis been my rage,
Or had Amyntas, or whoever else,

(What then, if swart Amyntas were? Dark e'en
Are violets, and martagons are dark ;-)
With me among the willows, underneath

The limber vine, they might recline; her wreaths
For me would Phyllis cull, Amyntas sing.
Here icy springs there be, here velvet meads,
Lycoris, here the glade; here I could be
Wasted away with thee by very age.

Now madding love in th' arms of callous Mars,
Among mid weapons and confronted foes,
Detains me: thou far from thy native land,
(May it ne'er be my fortune to believe

[A truth] so grievous !) dost the snows of Alps,
Ah! heartless! and the chills of Rhine, from me
Apart, alone behold. Ah! may the chills
Not mischief thee! Ah! may the rugged ice

Not gash thy tender foot-soles! I will go,

And the lays, which were framed in Chalcis' verse

By me, on the Sicilian shepherd's reed

I'll play. 'Tis fixed that I within the woods,

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Lines 67-70. So when the "gentle squire" had fallen under the displeasure of Belphœbe: Faerie Queene, iv. 7, 38:

"At last, when long he followd had in vaine,

Mid wild beasts' caverns liefer would endure,
And carve my loves upon the tender trees;-
Grow they will, ye will grow, my loves. Meanwhile

Yet found no ease of griefe nor hope of grace,

Unto those woods he turned back againe,

Full of sad anguish and in heavy case:
And, finding there fit solitary place

For wofull wight, chose out a gloomy glade,
Where hardly eye mote see bright heavens face
For mossy trees, which covered all with shade

And sad melancholy; there he his cabin made."

When Prince Arthure discovers him, he finds that he had followed the example of Gallus, in making the trees the monuments of his affection:

"And eke by that he saw on every tree

How he the name of one engraven had,

Which likely was his liefest love to be."

And so also Colin: Colin Clout, 632:

"Her name in every tree I will endosse,

That, as the trees do grow, her name may grow."

We find Orlando doing the same in As You Like It, iii. 2:
"Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love:

And thou, thrice crowned queen of night, survey
With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above,
Thy huntress' name, that my full life doth sway.
O Rosalind! these trees shall be my books,
And in their barks my thoughts I'll character;
That every eye, which in this forest looks,

Shall see thy virtue witness'd every where.
Run, run, Orlando; carve on every tree
The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she."

Cowley makes such carvings fatal to the tree :
"I cut my love into his gentle bark,

And in three days, behold! 'tis dead."

"Pardon, ye birds and nymphs, who loved this shade;
And pardon me, thou gentle tree;

I thought her name would thee have happy made,
And blessed omens hoped from thee:

O'er Mænalus I'll range with mingled nymphs;
Or hunt the hot wild boars; no chills shall bar
My compassing with hounds Parthenian glades.
Meseems that now through rocks and ringing groves
I'm roaming; 'tis my joy from Parthian bow
To shoot Cydonian arrows; as if this

Were a cure for my frenzy, or that god
May learn to soften at the ills of men.
Now neither Hamadryads any more,

Nor

songs

themselves charm us; ye very woods Once more give way. Our woes cannot change him,

Neither if we were both amid the frosts

To quaff the Hebrus, and Lithonian snows
Of watery winter were to undergo;
Nor if, when dying shrivels up the bark
Upon the lofty elm, to drive about

The Ethiopians' sheep 'neath Cancer's star.
Love conquers all: let us too yield to Love."

'Twill be enough, Pierian maids divine,

That these your bard hath chanted, while he sits,
And with slight mallow weaves his little frail;
Ye these of greatest interest will make
To Gallus: unto Gallus, love of whom
As fast is growing on me every hour,
As in the infant spring the alder green
Uprears itself. Let us arise; the shade
Is baleful wont to prove to those who sing;

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'Notes of my love, thrive here,' said I, 'and grow;
And with ye let my love do so.""

The Mistress: the Tree.

"Oh! might I here

In solitude live savage; in some glade

Obscured, where highest woods, impenetrable