8–9
ALPHESIBOEUS
Look, look I the very embers of themselves
have caught the altar with a flickering flame,
while I delay to fetch them: may the sign
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prove lucky! something it must mean, for sure,
and Hylax on the threshold 'gins to bark!
May we believe it, or are lovers still
by their own fancies fooled?
LYCIDAS
Say whither, Moeris?—Make you for the town,
we have lived to see, what never yet we feared,
an interloper own our little farm,
5
and say, “Be off, you former husbandmen!
These fields are mine.” Now, cowed and out of heart,
since Fortune turns the whole world upside down,
we are taking him—ill luck go with the same!—
LYCIDAS
But surely I had heard
that where the hills first draw from off the plain,
and the high ridge with gentle slope descends,
