The gifts of Heaven my following song pursues,
Aërial honey, and ambrosial dews.
Maecenas, read this other part, that sings
Embattled squadrons and adventurous kings⁠—
A mighty pomp, though made of little things.
Their arms, their arts, their manners, I disclose,
And how they war, and whence the people rose.
Slight is the subject, but the praise not small,
If Heaven assist, and Phoebus hear my call.

First, for thy bees a quiet station find,
And lodge them under covert of the wind
(For winds, when homeward they return, will drive
The loaded carriers from their evening hive),
Far from the cows’ and goats’ insulting crew,
That trample down the flowers, and brush the dew.
The painted lizard, and the birds of prey,
Foes of the frugal kind, be far away⁠—
The titmouse, and the pecker’s hungry brood,
And Procne, with her bosom stained in blood:
These rob the trading citizens, and bear
The trembling captives through the liquid air,
And for their callow young a cruel feast prepare.
But near a living stream their mansion place,
Edged round with moss, and tufts of matted grass:
And plant (the winds’ impetuous rage to stop)
Wild olive trees, or palms, before the busy shop;
That, when the youthful prince, with loud alarm,
Calls out the venturous colony to swarm⁠—
When first their way through yielding air they wing,
New to the pleasures of their native spring⁠—
The banks of brooks may make a cool retreat
For the raw soldiers from the scalding heat,
And neighbouring trees with friendly shade invite
The troops, unused to long laborious flight.
Then o’er the running stream, or standing lake,
A passage for thy weary people make;
With osier floats the standing waters strew;
Of massy stones make bridges, if it flow;
That basking in the sun thy bees may lie,
And resting there, their flaggy pinions dry,
When late returning home, the laden host
By raging winds is wrecked upon the coast.
Wild thyme and savory set around their cell,
Sweet to the taste, and fragrant to the smell:
Set rows of rosemary with flowering stem,
And let the purple violets drink the stream.

Whether thou build the palace of thy bees
With twisted osiers, or with barks of trees,
Make but a narrow mouth: for, as the cold
Congeals into a lump the liquid gold,
So ’tis again dissolved by summer’s heat;
And the sweet labours both extremes defeat.
And therefore, not in vain, the industrious kind
With dauby wax and flowers the chinks have lined,
And, with their stores of gathered glue, contrive
To stop the vents and crannies of their hive.
Not bird lime, or Idaean pitch, produce
A more tenacious mass of clammy juice.

Nor bees are lodged in hives alone, but found
In chambers of their own beneath the ground:
Their vaulted roofs are hung in pumices,
And in the rotten trunks of hollow trees.

But plaster thou the chinky hives with clay,
And leafy branches o’er their lodgings lay:
Nor place them where too deep a water flows,
Or where the yew, their poisonous neighbour grows;
Nor roast red crabs, to offend the niceness of their nose;
Nor near the steaming stench of muddy ground;
Nor hollow rocks, that render back the sound,
And double images of voice rebound.

For what remains, when golden suns appear,
And under earth have driven the winter year,
The wingèd nation wanders through the skies,
And o’er the plains and shady forest flies:
Then, stooping on the meads and leafy bowers,
They skim the floods, and sip the purple flowers.
Exalted hence, and drunk with secret joy,
Their young succession all their cares employ;
They breed, they brood, instruct, and educate,
And make provision for the future state:
They work their waxen lodgings in their hives,
And labour honey to sustain their lives.

But when thou seest a swarming cloud arise,
That sweeps aloft, and darkens all the skies,
The motions of their hasty flight attend;
And know, to floods or woods, their airy march they bend.
Then melfoil beat, and honey-suckles pound;
With these alluring savours strew the ground;
And mix with tinkling brass, the cymbals droning sound.
Straight to their ancient cells, recalled from air,
The reconciled deserters will repair.
But, if intestine broils alarm the hive
(For two pretenders oft for empire strive),
The vulgar in divided factions jar;
And murmuring sounds proclaim the civil war.
Inflamed with ire, and trembling with disdain,
Scarce can their limbs their mighty souls contain.
With shouts, the coward’s courage they excite,
And martial clangours call them out to fight:
With hoarse alarms the hollow camp rebounds,
That imitate the trumpet’s angry sounds:
Then to their common standard they repair;
The nimble horsemen scour the fields of air;
In form of battle drawn, they issue forth,
And every knight is proud to prove his worth.
Prest for their country’s honour and their king’s,
On their sharp beaks they whet their pointed stings,
And exercise their arms, and tremble with their wings.
Full in the midst the haughty monarchs ride;
The trusty guards come up, and close the side;
With shouts the daring foe to battle is defied.

Thus in the season of unclouded spring,
To war they follow their undaunted king;
Crowd through their gates; and, in the fields of light,
The shocking squadrons meet in mortal fight.
Headlong they fall from high, and wounded wound;
And heaps of slaughtered soldiers bite the ground.
Hard hail-stones lye not thicker on the plain,
Nor shaken oaks such showers of acorns rain.
With gorgeous wings, the marks of sovereign sway,
The two contending princes make their way;
Intrepid through the midst of danger go,
Their friends encourage, and amaze the foe.
With mighty souls in narrow bodies prest,
They challenge, and encounter breast to breast;
So fixed on fame, unknowing how to fly,
And obstinately bent to win or die,
That long the doubtful combat they maintain,
Till one prevails⁠—for only one can reign.
Yet all these dreadful deeds, this deadly fray,
A cast of scattered dust will soon allay,
And undecided leave the fortune of the day.

When both the chiefs are sundered from the fight,
Then to the lawful king restore his right;
And let the wasteful prodigal be slain,
That he, who best deserves, alone may reign.
With ease distinguished is the regal race:
One monarch wears an honest open face:
Shaped to his size, and godlike to behold,
His royal body shines with specks of gold,
And ruddy scales; for empire he designed,
Is better born, and of a nobler kind.
That other looks like nature in disgrace:
Gaunt are his sides, and sullen is his face;
And like their grisly prince appear his gloomy race,
Grim, ghastly, rugged, like a thirsty train
That long have traveled through a desert plain,
And spet from their dry chaps the gather’d dust again.
The better brood, unlike the bastard crew,
Are marked with royal streaks of shining hue;
Glittering and ardent, though in body less:
From these, at ’pointed seasons, hope to press
Huge heavy honeycombs, of golden juice,
Not only sweet, but pure, and fit for use,
To allay the strength and hardness of the wine,
And with old Bacchus new metheglin join.

But, when the swarms are eager of their play,
And loathe their empty hives, and idly stray,
Restrain the wanton fugitives, and take
A timely care to bring the truants back.
The task is easy⁠—but to clip the wings
Of their high-flying arbitrary kings.
At their command, the people swarm away:
Confine the tyrant, and the slaves will stay.

Sweet gardens, full of saffron flowers, invite
The wandering gluttons, and retard their flight⁠—
Besides the god obscene, who frights away,
With his lath sword, the thieves and birds of prey,
With his own hand, the guardian of the bees,
For slips of pines may search the mountain trees,
And with wild thyme and savory plant the plain,
Till his hard horny fingers ache with pain;
And deck with fruitful trees the fields around,
And with refreshing waters drench the ground.

Now, did I not so near my labours end,
Strike sail, and hastening to the harbour tend,
My song to flowery gardens might extend⁠—
To teach the vegetable arts, to sing
The Paestan roses, and their double spring;
How succory drinks the running streams, and how
Green beds of parsley near the river grow;
How cucumbers along the surface creep,
With crooked bodies, and with bellies deep⁠—
The late narcissus, and the winding trail
Of bear’s-foot, myrtles green, and ivy pale:
For, where with stately towers Tarentum stands,
And deep Galaesus soaks the yellow sands,
I chanced an old Corycian swain to know,
Lord of few acres, and those barren too,
Unfit for sheep or vines, and more unfit to sow;
Yet, labouring well his little spot of ground,
Some scattering pot-herbs here and there he found,
Which cultivated with his daily care,
And bruised with vervain, were his frugal fare.
Sometimes white lilies did their leaves afford,
With wholesome poppy-flowers, to mend his homely board;
For, late returning home, he supped at ease,
And wisely deemed the wealth of monarchs less:
The little of his own, because his own, did please.

To quit his care, he gathered, first of all
In spring the roses, apples in the fall;
And, when cold winter split the rocks in twain,
And ice the running rivers did restrain,
He stripped the bear’s-foot of its leafy growth,
And, calling western winds, accused the spring of sloth.
He therefore first among the swains was found
To reap the product of his laboured ground,
And squeeze the combs with golden liquor crowned.
His limes were first in flowers; his lofty pines,
With friendly shade, secured his tender vines.
For every bloom his trees in spring afford,
An autumn apple was by tale restored.
He knew to rank his elms in even rows,
For fruit the grafted pear-tree to dispose,
And tame to plums the sourness of the sloes.
With spreading planes he made a cool retreat,
To shade good fellows from the summer’s heat.
But, straitened in my space, I must forsake
This task, for others afterwards to take.

Describe we next the nature of the bees,
Bestowed by Jove for secret services,
When, by the tinkling sound of timbrels led,
The king of heaven in Cretan caves they fed.
Of all the race of animals, alone
The bees have common cities of their own,
And common sons; beneath one law they live,
And with one common stock their traffic drive.
Each has a certain home, a several stall:
All is the state’s; the state provides for all.
Mindful of coming cold, they share the pain,
And hoard, for winter’s use, the summer’s gain.
Some o’er the public magazines preside;
And some are sent new forage to provide:
These drudge in fields abroad; and those at home
Lay deep foundations for the laboured comb,
With dew, narcissus leaves, and clammy gum.
To pitch the waxen flooring some contrive;
Some nurse the future nation of the hive:
Sweet honey some condense; some purge the grout;
The rest, in cells apart, the liquid nectar shut:
All, with united force, combine to drive
The lazy drones from the laborious hive:
With envy stung, they view each other’s deeds:
With diligence the fragrant work proceeds.

As when the Cyclops, at the almighty nod,
New thunder hasten for their angry god,
Subdued in fire the stubborn metal lies;
One brawny smith the puffing bellows plies,
And draws and blows reciprocating air:
Others to quench the hissing mass prepare:
With lifted arms they order every blow,
And chime their sounding hammers in a row:
With laboured anvils Aetna groans below.
Strongly they strike; huge flakes of flames expire;
With tongs they turn the steel, and vex it in the fire.
If little things with great we may compare,
Such are the bees, and such their busy care:
Studious of honey each in his degree,
The youthful swain, the grave experienced bee⁠—
That in the field; this, in affairs of state
Employed at home, abides within the gate,
To fortify the combs, to build the wall,
To prop the ruins, lest the fabric fall:
But, late at night, with weary pinions come
The labrouring youth, and heavy laden, home.
Plains, meads, and orchards, all the day he plies;
The gleans of yellow thyme distend his thighs:
He spoils the saffron flowers; he sips the blues
Of violets, wilding blooms, and willow dews.

Their toil is common, common is their sleep;
They shake their wings when morn begins to peep;
Rush through the city gates without delay;
Nor ends their work, but with declining day.
Then, having spent the last remains of light,
They give their bodies due repose at night,
When hollow murmurs of their evening bells
Dismiss the sleepy swains, and toll them to their cells.
When once in beds their weary limbs they steep,
No buzzing sounds disturb their golden sleep.
’Tis sacred silence all. Nor dare they stray,
When rain is promised, or a stormy day;
But near the city walls their watering take,
Nor forage far, but short excursions make.

And as when empty barks on billows float,
With sandy ballast sailors trim the boat;
So bees bear gravel-stones, whose poising weight
Steers through the whistling winds their steady flight.

But (what’s more strange) their modest appetites,
Averse from Venus, fly the nuptial rites.
No lust enervates their heroic mind,
Nor wastes their strength on wanton womankind;
But in their mouths reside their genial powers:
They gather children from the leaves and flowers.
Thus make they kings to fill the regal seat
And thus their little citizens create,
And waxen cities build, and palaces of state.
And oft on rocks their tender wings they tear,
And sink beneath the burdens which they bear:
Such rage of honey in their bosom beats;
And such a zeal they have for flowery sweets.

Thus though the race of life they quickly run,
Which in the space of seven short years is done,
The immortal line in sure succession reigns:
The fortune of the family remains;
And grandsires’ grandsons the long list contains.

Besides, not Egypt, India, Media, more
With servile awe their idol king adore:
While he survives, in concord and content
The commons live, by no divisions rent;
But the great monarch’s death dissolves the government.
All goes to ruin; they themselves contrive
To rob the honey, and subvert the hive.
The king presides, his subjects’ toil surveys;
The servile rout their careful Caesar praise:
Him they extol; they worship him alone;
They crowd his levees, and support his throne:
They raise him on their shoulders with a shout;
And, when their sovereign’s quarrel calls them out,
His foes to mortal combat they defy,
And think it honour at his feet to die.

Induced by such examples, some have taught
That bees have portions of ethereal thought⁠—
Endued with particles of heavenly fires;
For God the whole created mass inspires.
Through heaven, and earth, and ocean’s depth, he throws
His influence round, and kindles as he goes.
Hence flocks, and herds, and men, and beasts, and fowls
With breath are quickened, and attract their souls;
Hence take the forms his prescience did ordain,
And into him at length resolve again.
No room is left for death: they mount the sky,
And to their own congenial planets fly.

Now, when thou hast decreed to seize their stores,
And by prerogative to break their doors,
With sprinkled water first the city choke,
And then pursue the citizens with smoke.
Two honey harvests fall in every year:
First, when the pleasing Pleiades appear,
And, springing upward, spurn the briny seas:
Again, when their affrighted choir surveys
The watery Scorpion mend his pace behind,
With a black train of storms and winter wind,
They plunge into the deep, and safe protection find.
Prone to revenge, the bees, a wrathful race,
When once provoked, assault the aggressor’s face,
And through the purple veins a passage find;
There fix their stings, and leave their souls behind.

But, if a pinching winter thou foresee,
And wouldst preserve thy famished family;
With fragrant thyme the city fumigate,
And break the waxen walls to save the state.
For lurking lizards often lodge, by stealth,
Within the suburbs, and purloin their wealth;
And worms, that shun the light, a dark retreat
Have found in combs, and undermined the seat;
Or lazy drones, without their share of pain,
In winter-quarters, free, devour the gain;
Or wasps infest the camp with loud alarms,
And mix in battle with unequal arms;
Or secret moths are there in silence fed;
Or spiders in the vault their snary webs have spread.

The more oppressed by foes, or famine-pined,
The more increase thy care to save the sinking kind:
With greens and flowers recruit their empty hives,
And seek fresh forage to sustain their lives.

But, since they share with man one common fate,
In health and sickness, and in turns of state⁠—
Observe the symptoms. When they fall away,
And languish with insensible decay,
They change their hue; with haggard eyes they stare:
Lean are their looks, and shagged is their hair:
And crowds of dead, that never must return
To their loved hives, in decent pomp are borne:
Their friends attend the hearse; the next relations mourn.
The sick, for air, before the portal gasp,
Their feeble legs within each other clasp,
Or idle in their empty hives remain,
Benumbed with cold, and listless of their gain.
Soft whispers then, and broken sounds, are heard,
As when the woods by gentle winds are stirred;
Such stifled noise as the close furnace hides,
Or dying murmurs of departing tides.
This when thou seest, galbanean odours use,
And honey in the sickly hive infuse.
Through reeden pipes convey the golden flood,
To invite the people to their wonted food,
Mix it with thickened juice of sodden wines,
And raisins from the grapes of Psythian vines:
To these add pounded galls, and roses dry,
And, with Cecropian thyme, strong-scented centaury.

A flower there is, that grows in meadow ground,
Amellus called, and easy to be found;
For, from one root, the rising stem bestows
A wood of leaves, and violet purple boughs:
The flower itself is glorious to behold,
And shines on altars like refulgent gold⁠—
Sharp to the taste⁠—by shepherds near the stream
Of Mella found; and thence they gave the name.
Boil this restoring root in generous wine,
And set beside the door, the sickly stock to dine.
But, if the labouring kind be wholly lost,
And not to be retrieved with care or cost;
’Tis time to touch the precepts of an art,
The Arcadian master did of old impart;
And how he stocked his empty hives again,
Renewed with putrid gore of oxen slain.
An ancient legend I prepare to sing,
And upward follow Fame’s immortal spring:

For, where with seven-fold horns mysterious Nile
Surrounds the skirts of Egypt’s fruitful isle,
And where in pomp the sun-burnt people ride,
On painted barges, o’er the teeming tide,
Which, pouring down from Ethiopian lands,
Makes green the soil with slime, and black prolific sands:
That length of region, and large tract of ground,
In this one art a sure relief have found.

First, in a place by nature close, they build
A narrow flooring, guttered, walled, and tiled.
In this, four windows are contrived, that strike,
To the four winds opposed, their beams oblique.
A steer of two years old they take, whose head
Now first with burnished horns begins to spread:
They stop his nostrils, while he strives in vain
To breathe free air, and struggles with his pain.
Knocked down, he dies: his bowels, bruised within,
Betray no wound on his unbroken skin.
Extended thus, in this obscene abode
They leave the beast; but first sweet flowers are strewed
Beneath his body, broken boughs and thyme,
And pleasing cassia, just renewed in prime.
This must be done ere spring makes equal day,
When western winds on curling waters play;
Ere painted meads produce their flowery crops,
Or swallows twitter on the chimney tops.
The tainted blood, in this close prison pent,
Begins to boil, and through the bones ferment.
Then (wondrous to behold) new creatures rise,
A moving mass at first, and short of thighs;
Till, shooting out with legs, and imped with wings,
The grubs proceed to bees with pointed stings,
And, more and more affecting air, they try
Their tender pinions, and begin to fly:
At length, like summer storms from spreading clouds,
That burst at once, and pour impetuous floods⁠—
Or flights of arrows from the Parthian bows,
When from afar they gall embattled foes⁠—
With such a tempest through the skies they steer;
And such a form the wingèd squadrons bear.

What god, O Muse! this useful science taught?
Or by what man’s experience was it brought?

Sad Aristaeus from fair Tempè fled⁠—
His bees with famine or diseases dead:
On Penëus’ banks he stood, and near his holy head;
And, while his falling tears the stream supplied,
Thus, mourning, to his mother goddess cried:
“Mother Cyrene! mother, whose abode
Is in the depth of this immortal flood!
What boots it, that from Phoebus’ loins I spring,
The third, by him and thee, from heaven’s high king?
O! where is all thy boasted pity gone,
And promise of the skies to thy deluded son?
Why didst thou me, unhappy me, create,
Odious to gods, and born to bitter fate?
Whom scarce my sheep, and scarce my painful plough
The needful aids of human life allow:
So wretched is thy son, so hard a mother thou!
Proceed, inhuman parent, in thy scorn;
Root up my trees; with blights destroy my corn;
My vineyards ruin, and my sheepfolds burn.
Let loose thy rage; let all thy spite be shown,
Since thus thou hate pursues the praises of thy son.”
But, from her mossy bower below the ground,
His careful mother heard the plaintive sound⁠—
Encompassed with her sea-green sisters round.
One common work they plied; their distaffs full
With carded locks of blue Milesian wool.
Spio, with Drymo brown, and Xantho fair,
And sweet Phyllodocè with long dishevelled hair;
Cydippè with Licorias, once a maid,
And one that once had called Lucina’s aid;
Clio and Beroë, from one father both;
Both girt with gold, and clad in parti-coloured cloth;
Opis the meek, and Deïopeia proud:
Nisaea lofty, with Ligea loud;
Thalia joyous, Ephyrè the sad,
And Arethusa, once Diana’s maid,
But now (her quiver left) to love betrayed.
To these Climenè the sweet theft declares
Of Mars; and Vulcan’s unavailing cares;
And all the rapes of gods, and every love,
From ancient Chaos down to youthful Jove.

Thus while she sings, the sisters turn the wheel,
Empty the woolly rock, and fill the reel.
A mournful sound again the mother hears;
Again the mournful sound invades the sisters’ ears.
Starting at once from their green seats, they rise⁠—
Fear in their heart, amazement in their eyes.
But Arethusa, leaping from her bed,
First lifts above the waves her beauteous head,
And, crying from afar, thus to Cyrene said:
“O sister, not with causeless fear possest!
No stranger voice disturbs thy tender breast.
’Tis Aristaeus, ’tis thy darling son,
Who to his careless mother makes his moan.
Near his paternal stream he sadly stands,
With downcast eyes, wet cheeks, and folded hands,
Upbraiding heaven, from whence his lineage came,
And cruel calls the gods, and cruel thee, by name.”

Cyrene, moved with love, and seized with fear,
Cries out, “Conduct my son, conduct him here:
’Tis lawful for the youth, derived from gods,
To view the secrets of our deep abodes.”
At once she waved her hand on either side;
At once the ranks of swelling streams divide.
Two rising heaps of liquid crystal stand,
And leave a space betwixt, of empty sand.
Thus safe received, the downward track he treads,
Which to his mother’s watery palace leads.
With wondering eyes he views the secret store
Of lakes, that, pent in hollow caverns, roar:
He hears the crackling sound of coral woods,
And sees the secret source of subterranean floods;
And where, distinguished in their several cells,
The fount of Phasis; and of Lycus, dwells;
Where swift Enipeus in his bed appears,
And Tiber his majestic forehead rears;
Whence Anio flows, and Hypanis profound
Breaks through the opposing rocks with raging sound:
Where Po first issues from his dark abodes,
And, awful in his cradle, rules the floods:
Two golden horns on his large front he wears,
And his grim face a bull’s resemblance bears:
With rapid course he seeks the sacred main,
And fattens, as he runs, the fruitful plain.

Now, to the court arrived, the admiring son
Beholds the vaulted roofs of pory stone,
Now to his mother goddess tells his grief,
Which she with pity hears, and promises relief.
The officious nymphs attending in a ring,
With waters drawn from their perpetual spring,
From earthly dregs his body purify,
And rub his temples, with fine towels, dry;
Then load the tables with a liberal feast,
And honour with full bowls their friendly guest.
The sacred altars are involved in smoke;
And the bright choir their kindred gods invoke.
Two bowls the mother fills with Lydian wine;
Then thus: “Let these be poured with rites divine,
To the great authors of our watery line⁠—
To father Ocean, this; and this (she said)
Be to the nymphs his sacred sisters paid,
Who rule the watery plains, and hold the woodland shade.”
She sprinkled thrice, with wine, the Vestal fire,
Thrice to the vaulted roofs the flames aspire.
Raised with so blest an omen, she begun,
With words like these, to cheer her drooping son;
“In the Carpathian bottom, makes abode
The shepherd of the seas, a prophet, and a god.
High o’er the main in watery pomp he rides,
His azure car and finny coursers guides⁠—
Proteus his name.⁠—To his Pallenian port
I see from far the weary god resort.
Him, not alone, we river gods adore,
But aged Nereus hearkens to his lore.
With sure foresight, and with unerring doom,
He sees what is, and was, and is to come.
This Neptune gave him, when he gave to keep
His scaly flocks, that graze the watery deep.
Implore his aid; for Proteus only knows
The secret cause, and cure, of all thy woes.
But first the wily wizard must be caught:
For, unconstrained, he nothing tells for naught;
Nor is with prayers or bribes, or flattery bought.
Surprise him first, and with hard fetters bind;
Then all his frauds will vanish into wind.
I will myself conduct thee on thy way;
When next the southing sun inflames the day,
When the dry herbage thirsts for dews in vain,
And sheep, in shades, avoid the parching plain;
Then will I lead thee to his secret seat,
When, weary with his toil, and scorched with heat,
The wayward sire frequents his cool retreat.
His eyes with heavy slumber overcast⁠—
With force invade his limbs, and bind him fast.
Thus surely bound, yet be not over bold:
The slippery god will try to loose his hold,
And various forms assume, to cheat thy sight,
And with vain images of beasts affright;
With foamy tusks he seems a bristly boar,
Or imitate the lion’s angry roar:
Break out in crackling flames to shun thy snare,
Or hiss a dragon, or a tiger stare:
Or, with a wile thy caution to betray,
In fleeting streams attempts to slide away.
But thou, the more he varies forms, beware
To strain his fetters with a stricter care,
Till, tiring all his arts, he turns again
To his true shape, in which he first was seen.”

This said, with nectar she her son anoints,
Infusing vigour through his mortal joints;
Down from his head the liquid odours ran:
He breathed of heaven, and looked above a man.

Within a mountain’s hollow womb there lies
A large recess, concealed from human eyes,
Where heaps of billows, driven by wind and tide,
In form of war, their watery ranks divide,
And there, like sentries set, without the mouth abide;
A station safe for ships, when tempests roar,
A silent harbour, and a covered shore.
Secure within resides the various god,
And draws a rock upon his dark abode.
Hither with silent steps, secure from sight,
The goddess guides her son, and turns him from the light:
Herself, involved in clouds, precipitates her flight.

’Twas noon; the sultry Dog-star from the sky
Scorched Indian swains; the rivelled grass was dry;
The sun with flaming arrows pierced the flood,
And, darting to the bottom, baked the mud;
When weary Proteus, from the briny waves,
Retired for shelter to his wonted caves.
His finny flocks about their shepherd play,
And, rolling round him, spirt the bitter sea.
Unweildily they wallow first in ooze,
Then in the shady covert seek repose.
Himself, their herdsman, on the middle mount,
Takes of his mustered flocks a just account.
So, seated on a rock, a shepherd’s groom
Surveys his evening flocks returning home,
When lowing calves and bleating lambs from far,
Provoke the prowling wolf to nightly war.

The occasion offers, and the youth complies:
For scarce the weary god had closed his eyes,
When, rushing on with shouts, he binds in chains
The drowsy prophet, and his limbs constrains.
He, not unmindful of his usual art,
First in dissembled fire attempts to part:
Then roaring beasts, and running streams, he tries,
And wearies all his miracles of lies:
But, having shifted every form to ’scape,
Convinced of conquest, he resumed his shape,
And, thus, at length, in human accent spoke:
“Audacious youth! what madness could provoke
A mortal man to invade a sleeping god?
What business brought thee to my dark abode?”

To this the audacious youth: “Thou knowest full well
My name and business, god; nor need I tell.
No man can Proteus cheat: but, Proteus, leave
Thy fraudful arts, and do not thou deceive.
Following the gods’ command, I come to implore
Thy help, my perished people to restore.”
The seer, who could not yet his wrath assuage,
Rolled his green eyes, that sparkled with his rage,
And gnashed his teeth, and cried, “No vulgar god
Pursues thy crimes, nor with a common rod.
Thy great misdeeds have met a due reward;
And Orpheus’ dying prayers at length are heard.
For crimes not his, the lover lost his life,
And at thy hands requires his murdered wife:
Nor (if the Fates assist not) canst thou ’scape
The just revenge of that intended rape.
To shun thy lawless lust, the dying bride,
Unwary, took along the river’s side,
Nor at her heels perceived the deadly snake,
That kept the bank, in covert of the brake.
But all her fellow-nymphs the mountains tear
With loud laments, and break the yielding air:
The realms of Mars remurmur all around,
And echoes to the Athenian shores rebound.
The unhappy husband, husband now no more,
Did on his tuneful harp his loss deplore,
And sought, his mournful mind with music to restore.
On thee, dear wife, in deserts all alone,
He called, sighed, sung: his griefs with day begun,
Nor were they finished with the setting sun.
E’en to the dark dominions of the night
He took his way, through forests void of light,
And dared amidst the trembling ghosts to sing,
And stood before the inexorable king.
The infernal troops like passing shadows glide,
And, listening, crowd the sweet musician’s side⁠—
(Not flocks of birds, when driven by storms or night,
Stretch to the forest with so thick a flight)⁠—
Men, matrons, children, and the unmarried maid,
The mighty hero’s more majestic shade,
And youths, on funeral piles before their parents laid.
All these Cocytus bounds with squalid reeds,
With muddy ditches, and with deadly weeds;
And baleful Styx encompasses around,
With nine slow circling streams, the unhappy ground.
E’en from the depths of hell the damned advance;
The infernal mansions, nodding, seem to dance;
The gaping three-mouthed dog forgets to snarl;
The Furies hearken, and their snakes uncurl;
Ixion seems no more his pains to feel,
But leans attentive on his standing wheel.
All dangers past, at length the lovely bride
In safety goes, with her melodious guide,
Longing the common light again to share,
And draw the vital breath of upper air⁠—
He first; and close behind him followed she;
For such was Proserpine’s severe decree⁠—
When strong desires the impatient youth invade,
By little caution and much love betrayed:
A fault, which easy pardon might receive,
Were lovers judges, or could hell forgive:
For near the confines of ethereal light,
And longing for the glimmering of a sight,
The unwary lover cast his eyes behind,
Forgetful of the law, nor master of his mind.
Straight all his hopes exhaled in empty smoke;
And his long toils were forfeit for a look.
Three flashes of blue lightning gave the sign
Of covenants broke; three peals of thunder join.
Then thus the bride; “What fury seized on thee,
Unhappy man! to lose thy self and me?
Dragged back again by cruel Destinies,
An iron slumber shuts my swimming eyes.
And now farewell! Involved in shades of night,
For ever I am ravished from thy sight.
In vain I reach my feeble hands, to join
In sweet embraces⁠—ah! no longer thine!”
She said: and from his eyes the fleeting fair
Retired like subtle smoke dissolved in air,
And left her hopeless lover in despair.
In vain, with folding arms, the youth essayed
To stop her flight, and strain the flying shade:
He prays; he raves; all means in vain he tries,
With rage inflamed, astonished with surprise;
But she returned no more, to bless his longing eyes.
Nor would the infernal ferryman once more
Be bribed to waft him to the farther shore.
What should he do, who twice had lost his love?
What notes invent, what new petitions move?
Her soul already was consigned to fate,
And shivering in the leaky sculler sat.
For seven continued months, if fame say true,
The wretched swain his sorrows did renew:
By Strymon’s freezing streams he sat alone:
The rocks were moved to pity with his moan:
Trees bent their heads to hear him sing his wrongs:
Fierce tigers couched around, and lolled their fawning tongues.
So, close in poplar shades, her children gone,
The mother nightingale laments alone,
Whose nest some prying churl had found, and thence
By stealth, conveyed the unfeathered innocence.
But she supplies the night with mournful strains;
And melancholy music fills the plains.
Sad Orpheus thus his tedious hours employs,
Averse from Venus, and from nuptial joys.
Alone he tempts the frozen floods, alone
The unhappy climes, where spring was never known:
He mourned his wretched wife, in vain restored,
And Pluto’s unavailing boon deplored.
The Thracian matrons⁠—who the youth accused
Of love disdained, and marriage-rites refused⁠—
With furies and nocturnal orgies fired,
At length against his sacred life conspired.
Whom e’en the savage beasts had spared, they killed,
And strewed his mangled limbs about the field.
Then, when his head, from his fair shoulders torn,
Washed by the waters, was on Hebrus borne,
E’en then his trembling tongue invoked his bride;
“With his last voice, ‘Eurydice,’ he cried,
‘Eurydice,’ the rocks and river-banks replied.”

This answer Proteus gave; nor more he said,
But in the billows plunged his hoary head;
And where he leaped, the waves in circles widely spread.

The nymph returned, her drooping son to cheer,
And bade him banish his superfluous fear:
“For now (said she) the cause is known, from whence
Thy woe succeeded, and for what offence.
The nymphs, companions of the unhappy maid,
This punishment upon thy crimes have laid;
And sent a plague among thy thriving bees.⁠—
With vows and suppliant prayers their powers appease:
The soft Napaean race will soon repent
Their anger, and remit the punishment.
The secret in an easy method lies;
Select four brawny bulls for sacrifice,
Which on Lycaeus graze, without a guide;
Add four fair heifers yet in yoke untried.
For these, four altars in their temple rear,
And then adore the woodland powers with prayer.
From the slain victims pour the streaming blood,
And leave their bodies in the shady wood:
Nine mornings thence, Lethaean poppy bring,
To appease the manes of the poet’s king,
And, to propitiate his offended bride,
A fatted calf and a black ewe provide:
This finished, to the former woods repair.”
His mother’s precepts he performs with care;
The temple visits, and adores with prayer;
Four altars raises; from his herd he culls,
For slaughter, four the fairest of his bulls:
Four heifers from his female store he took,
All fair, and all unknowing of the yoke.
Nine mornings thence, with sacrifice and prayers,
The powers atoned, he to the grove repairs.
Behold a prodigy! for, from within
The broken bowels and the bloated skin,
A buzzing noise of bees their ears alarms;
Straight issue through the sides assembling swarms.
Dark as a cloud, they make a wheeling flight,
Then on a neighbouring tree, descending, light:
Like a large cluster of black grapes they show,
And make a large dependence from the bough.

Thus have I sung of fields, and flocks, and trees,
And of the waxen work of labouring bees:
While mighty Caesar, thundering from afar,
Seeks on Euphrates’ banks the spoils of war;
With conquering arts asserts his country’s cause,
With arts of peace the willing people draws;
On the glad earth the golden age renews,
And his great father’s path to heaven pursues;
While I at Naples pass my peaceful days,
Affecting studies of less noisy praise;
And, bold through youth, beneath the beechen shade,
The lays of shepherds, and their loves, have played.