How Pan found out the pipe, Pallas the flute,
Phoebus the lyre, and Mercury the lute.
But not a jot for all my words cared he,
But lo! fell singing his love-songs to me,
And told me of the loves of gods and men,
And of his mother's doings :—and so then,
I forgot all I taught him, for my part,
But all he taught to me, I learnt by heart.
Attributed by some to Moschus, and by others to Bion.
Hesper, dear Hesper, golden lovely light,
Of Venus,-presence in the dark blue night,-
Only less lovely than the moon as far
As thou art bright to every other star;
Hail, loved one; and as she begins to day
To go down early, hold me from above
Thy light, and let me be supplied by thee:-
I come not forth to steal or to way-lay;
I go to sup with one that waits for me;—
I love; and lovers should be helped with love.
Moan with me, moan, ye woods and Dorian waters,
And weep, ye rivers, the delightful Bion;
Ye plants, now stand in tears; murmur, ye groves ;
Ye flowers, sigh forth your odours with sad buds;
Flush deep, ye roses and anemones;
And more than ever now, oh hyacinth, shew
Your written sorrows :—the sweet singer's dead.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Ye nightingales, that mourn in the thick leaves,
Tell the Sicilian streams of Arethuse,
Bion the shepherd's dead; and that with him Melody's dead, and gone the Dorian song.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Weep on the waters, ye Strymonian swans,
And utter forth a melancholy song,
Tender as his whose voice was like your own;
And say to the Oeagrian girls, and say
To all the nymphs haunting in Bistony,
The Doric Orpheus is departed from us.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
No longer pipes he to the charmed herds,
No longer sits under the lonely oaks,
And sings; but to the ears of Pluto now
Tunes his Lethean verse ; and so the hills
Are voiceless; and the cows that follow still
Beside the bulls, low and will not be fed.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Apollo, Bion, wept thy sudden fate :
The Satyrs too, and the Priapuses
Dark-veiled, and for that song of thine the Pans,
Groaned; and the fountain-nymphs within the
Mourned for thee, melting into tearful waters ; Echo too mourned among the rocks that she Must hush,-and imitate thy lips no longer; The trees and flowers put off their loveliness ; Milk flows not as 'twas used; and in the hive The honey moulders,—for there is no need, Now that thy honey's gone, to look for other.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Not so the dolphins mourned by the salt sea,
Not so the nightingale among the rocks,
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