9
LYCIDAS
feed, Tityrus, my goats, and, having fed,
drive to the drinking-pool, and, as you drive,
35
beware the he-goat; with his horn he butts.“
MOERIS
Ay, or to Varus that half-finished lay,
“Varus, thy name, so still our Mantua live—
Mantua to poor Cremona all too near—
shall singing swans bear upward to the stars.”
40
LYCIDAS
So may your swarms Cyrnean yew-trees shun,
your kine with cytisus their udders swell,
begin, if aught you have. The Muses made
me too a singer; I too have sung; the swains
call me a poet, but I believe them not:
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for naught of mine, or worthy Varius yet
or Cinna deem I, but account myself
a cackling goose among melodious swans.
MOERIS
'Twas in my thought to do so, Lycidas;
even now was I revolving silently
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if this I could recall—no paltry song:
“Come, Galatea, what pleasure is 't to play
amid the waves? Here glows the Spring, here earth
