by Theocritus
She smiled and said; ‘Why thou’rt a tiny thing,
As is the bee; yet sorely thou canst sting.’
IDYLL XX. Town and Country
Once I would kiss Eunicè. “Back,” quoth she,
And screamed and stormed; “a sorry clown kiss me?
Your country compliments, I like not such;
No lips but gentles’ would I deign to touch.
Ne’er dream of kissing me: alike I shun
Your face, your language, and your tigerish fun.
How winning are your tones, how fine your air!
Your beard how silken and how sweet your hair!
Pah! you’ve a sick man’s lips, a blackamoor’s hand:
Your breath’s defilement. Leave me, I command.”
Thrice spat she on her robe, and, muttering low,
Scanned me, with half-shut eyes, from top to toe:
Brought all her woman’s witcheries into play,
Still smiling in a set sarcastic way,
Till my blood boiled, my visage crimson grew
With indignation, as a rose with dew:
And so she left me, inly to repine
That such as she could flout such charms as mine.
O shepherds, tell me true! Am I not fair?
Am I transformed? For lately I did wear
Grace as a garment; and my cheeks, o’er them
Ran the rich growth like ivy round the stem.
Like fern my tresses o’er my temples streamed;
O’er my dark eyebrows, white my forehead gleamed:
My eyes were of Athenè’s radiant blue,
My mouth was milk, its accents honeydew.
Then I could sing — my tones were soft indeed! —
To pipe or flute or flageolet or reed:
And me did every maid that roams the fell
Kiss and call fair: not so this city belle.
She scorns the herdsman; knows not how divine
Bacchus ranged once the valleys with his kine;
How Cypris, maddened for a herdsman’s sake,
Deigned upon Phrygia’s mountains to partake
His cares: and wooed, and wept, Adonis in the brake.
What was Endymion, sweet Selenè’s love?
A herdsman’s lad. Yet came she from above,
Down to green Latmos, by his side to sleep.
And did not Rhea for a herdsman weep?
Didst not thou, Zeus, become a wandering bird,
To win the love of one who drove a herd?
Selenè, Cybelè, Cypris, all loved swains:
Eunicè, loftier-bred, their kiss disdains.
Henceforth, by hill or hall, thy love disown,
Cypris, and sleep the livelong night alone.
IDYLL XXI. The Fishermen.
ASPHALION, A COMRADE.
Want quickens wit: Want’s pupils needs must work,
O Diophantus: for the child of toil
Is grudged his very sleep by carking cares:
Or, if he taste the blessedness of night,
Thought for the morrow soon warns slumber off.
Two ancient fishers once lay side by side
On piled-up sea-wrack in their wattled hut,
Its leafy wall their curtain. Near them lay
The weapons of their trade, basket and rod,
Hooks, weed-encumbered nets, and cords and oars,
And, propped on rollers, an infirm old boat.
Their pillow was a scanty mat, eked out
With caps and garments: such the ways and means,
Such the whole treasury of the fishermen.
They knew no luxuries: owned nor door nor dog;
Their craft their all, their mistress Poverty:
Their only neighbour Ocean, who for aye
Bound their lorn hut came floating lazily.
Ere the moon’s chariot was in mid-career,
The fishers girt them for their customed toil,
And banished slumber from unwilling eyes,
And roused their dreamy intellects with speech: —
ASPHALION.
“They say that soon flit summer-nights away,
Because all lingering is the summer day:
Friend, it is false; for dream on dream have I
Dreamed, and the dawn still reddens not the sky.
How? am I wandering? or does night pass slow?”
HIS COMRADE.
“Asphalion, scout not the sweet summer so.
’Tis not that wilful seasons have gone wrong,
But care maims slumber, and the nights seem long.”
ASPHALION.
“Didst thou e’er study dreams? For visions fair
I saw last night; and fairly thou should’st share
The wealth I dream of, as the fish I catch.
Now, for sheer sense, I reckon few thy match;
And, for a vision, he whose motherwit
Is his sole tutor best interprets it.
And now we’ve time the matter to discuss:
For who could labour, lying here (like us)
Pillowed on leaves and neighboured by the deep,
Or sleeping amid thorns no easy sleep?
In rich men’s halls the lamps are burning yet;
But fish come alway to the rich man’s net.”
COMRADE.
“To me the vision of the night relate;
Speak, and reveal the riddle to thy mate.”
ASPHALION.
“Last evening, as I plied my watery trade,
(Not on an o’erfull stomach — we had made
Betimes a meagre meal, as you can vouch,)
I fell asleep; and lo! I seemed to crouch
Among the boulders, and for fish to wait,
Still dangling, rod in hand, my vagrant bait.
A fat fellow caught it: (e’en in sleep I’m bound
To dream of fishing, as of crusts the hound:)
Fast clung he to the hooks; his blood outwelled;
Bent with his struggling was the rod I held:
I tugged and tugged: my efforts made me ache:
‘How, with a line thus slight, this monster take?’
Then gently, just to warn him he was caught,
I twitched him once; then slacked and then made taut
My line, for now he offered not to ran;
A glance soon showed me all my task was done.
’Twas a gold fish, pure metal every inch
That I had captured. I began to flinch:
‘What if this beauty be the sea-king’s joy,
Or azure Amphitritè’s treasured toy!’
With care I disengaged him — not to rip
With hasty hook the gilding from his lip:
And with a tow-line landed him, and swore
Never to set my foot on ocean more,
But with my gold live royally ashore.
So I awoke: and, comrade, lend me now
Thy wits, for I am troubled for my vow.”
COMRADE.
“Ne’er quake: you’re pledged to nothing, for no prize
You gained or gazed on. Dreams are nought but lies.
Yet may this dream bear fruit; if, wide-awake
And not in dreams, you’ll fish the neighbouring lake.
Fish that are meat you’ll there mayhap behold,
Not die of famine, amid dreams of gold.”
IDYLL XXII. The Sons of Leda
The pair I sing, that Ægis-armèd Zeus
Gave unto Leda; Castor and the dread
Of bruisers Polydeuces, whensoe’er
His harnessed hands were lifted for the fray.
Twice and again I sing the manly sons
Of Leda, those Twin Brethren, Sparta’s own:
Who shield the soldier on the deadly scarp,
The horse wild-plunging o’er the crimson field,
The ship that, disregarding in her pride
Star-set and star-rise, meets disastrous gales: —
Such g
ales as pile the billows mountain-high,
E’en at their own wild will, round stem or stern:
Dash o’er the hold, the timbers rive in twain,
Till mast and tackle dangle in mid-air
Shivered like toys, and, as the night wears on,
The rain of heaven falls fast, and, lashed by wind
And iron hail, broad ocean rings again.
Then can they draw from out the nether abyss
Both craft and crew, each deeming he must die:
Lo the winds cease, and o’er the burnished deep
Comes stillness; this way flee the clouds and that;
And shine out clear the Great Bear and the Less,
And, ‘twixt the Asses dimly seen, the Crib
Foretells fair voyage to the mariner.
O saviours, O companions of mankind,
Matchless on horse or harp, in lists or lay;
Which of ye twain demands my earliest song?
Of both I sing; of Polydeuces first.
Argo, escaped the two inrushing rocks,
And snow-clad Pontus with his baleful jaws,
Came to Bebrycia with her heaven-sprung freight;
There by one ladder disembarked a host
Of Heroes from the decks of Jason’s ship.
On the low beach, to leeward of the cliff,
They leapt, and piled their beds, and lit their fires:
Castor meanwhile, the bridler of the steed,
And Polydeuces of the nut-brown face,
Had wandered from their mates; and, wildered both,
Searched through the boskage of the hill, and found
Hard by a slab of rock a bubbling spring
Brimful of purest water. In the depths
Below, like crystal or like silver gleamed
The pebbles: high above it pine and plane
And poplar rose, and cypress tipt with green;
With all rich flowers that throng the mead, when wanes
The Spring, sweet workshops of the furry bee.
There sat and sunned him one of giant bulk
And grisly mien: hard knocks had stov’n his ears:
Broad were his shoulders, vast his orbèd chest;
Like a wrought statue rose his iron frame:
And nigh the shoulder on each brawny arm
Stood out the muscles, huge as rolling stones
Caught by some rain-swoln river and shapen smooth
By its wild eddyings: and o’er nape and spine
Hung, balanced by the claws, a lion’s skin.
Him Leda’s conquering son accosted first: —
POLYDEUCES.
Luck to thee, friend unknown! Who own this shore?
AMYCUS.
Luck, quotha, to see men ne’er seen before!
POLYDEUCES.
Fear not, no base or base-born herd are we.
AMYCUS.
Nothing I fear, nor need learn this from thee.
POLYDEUCES.
What art thou? brutish churl, or o’erproud king?
AMYCUS.
E’en what thou see’st: and I am not trespassing.
POLYDEUCES.
Visit our land, take gifts from us, and go.
AMYCUS.
I seek naught from thee and can naught bestow.
POLYDEUCES.
Not e’en such grace as from yon spring to sip?
AMYCUS.
Try, if parched thirst sits languid on thy lip.
POLYDEUCES.
Can silver move thee? or if not, what can?
AMYCUS.
Stand up and fight me singly, man with man.
POLYDEUCES.
With fists? or fist and foot, eye covering eye?
AMYCUS.
Fall to with fists; and all thy cunning try.
POLYDEUCES.
This arm, these gauntlets, who shall dare withstand?
AMYCUS.
I: and “the Bruiser” lifts no woman’s-hand.
POLYDEUCES.
Wilt thou, to crown our strife, some meed assign?
AMYCUS.
Thou shalt be called my master, or I thine.
POLYDEUCES.
By crimson-crested cocks such games are won.
AMYCUS.
Lions or cocks, we’ll play this game or none.
He spoke, and clutched a hollow shell, and blew
His clarion. Straightway to the shadowy pine
Clustering they came, as loud it pealed and long,
Bebrycia’s bearded sons; and Castor too,
The peerless in the lists, went forth and called
From the Magnesian ship the Heroes all.
Then either warrior armed with coils of hide
His hands, and round his limbs bound ponderous bands,
And, breathing bloodshed, stept into the ring.
First there was much manoeuvring, who should catch
The sunlight on his rear: but thou didst foil,
O Polydeuces, valour by address;
And full on Amycus’ face the hot noon smote.
He in hot wrath strode forward, threatening war;
Straightway the Tyndarid smote him, as he closed,
Full on the chin: more furious waxed he still,
And, earthward bent, dealt blindly random blows.
Bebrycia shouted loud, the Greeks too cheered
Their champion: fearing lest in that scant space
This Tityus by sheer weight should bear him down.
But, shifting yet still there, the son of Zeus
Scored him with swift exchange of left and right,
And checked the onrush of the sea-god’s child
Parlous albeit: till, reeling with his wounds,
He stood, and from his lips spat crimson blood.
Cheered yet again the princes, when they saw
The lips and jowl all seamed with piteous scars,
And the swoln visage and the half-closed eyes.
Still the prince teased him, feinting here or there
A thrust; and when he saw him helpless all,
Let drive beneath his eyelids at his nose,
And laid it bare to the bone. The stricken man
Measured his length supine amid the fern.
Keen was the fighting when he rose again,
Deadly the blows their sturdy gauntlets dealt.
But while Bebrycia’s chieftain sparred round chest
And utmost shoulder, the resistless foe
Made his whole face one mass of hideous wounds.
While the one sweated all his bulk away,
And, late a giant, seemed a pigmy now,
The other’s limbs waxed ever as he fought
In semblance and in size. But in what wise
The child of Zeus brought low that man of greed,
Tell, Muse, for thine is knowledge: I unfold
A secret not mine own; at thy behest
Speak or am dumb, nor speak but as thou wilt.
Amycus, athirst to do some doughty deed,
Stooping aslant from Polydeuces’ lunge
Locked their left hands; and, stepping out, upheaved
From his right hip his ponderous other-arm.
And hit and harmed had been Amyclæ’s king;
But, ducking low, he smote with one stout fist
The foe’s left temple — fast the life-blood streamed
From the grim rift — and on his shoulder fell.
While with his left he reached the mouth, and made
The set teeth tingle; and, redoubling aye
His plashing blows, made havoc of his face
And crashed into his cheeks, till all abroad
He lay, and throwing up his arms disclaimed
The strife, for he was even at death’s door.
No wrong the vanquished suffered at thy hands,
O Polydeuces; but he sware an oath,
Calling his sire Poseidon from the depths,
Ne’er to do violence to a stranger m
ore.
Thy tale, O prince, is told. Now sing I thee,
Castor the Tyndarid, lord of rushing horse
And shaking javelin, corsleted in brass.
PART II.
The sons of Zeus had borne two maids away,
Leucippus’ daughters. Straight in hot pursuit
Went the two brethren, sons of Aphareus,
Lynceus and Idas bold, their plighted lords.
And when the tomb of Aphareus was gained,
All leapt from out their cars, and front to front
Stood, with their ponderous spears and orbed shields.
First Lynceus shouted loud from ‘neath his helm:
“Whence, sirs, this lust for strife? Why, sword in hand,
Raise ye this coil about your neighbours’ wives?
To us Leucippus these his daughters gave,
Long ere ye saw them: they are ours on oath.
Ye, coveting (to your shame) your neighbour’s bed
And kine and asses and whatever is his,
Suborned the man and stole our wives by bribes.
How often spake I thus before your face,
Yea I myself, though scant I am of phrase:
‘Not thus, fair sirs, do honourable men
Seek to woo wives whose troth is given elsewhere.
Lo, broad is Sparta, broad the hunting-grounds
Of Elis: fleecy Arcady is broad,
And Argos and Messene and the towns
To westward, and the long Sisyphian reach.
There ‘neath her parents’ roof dwells many a maid
Second to none in godliness or wit:
Wed of all these, and welcome, whom ye will,
For all men court the kinship of the brave;
And ye are as your sires, and they whose blood
Runs in your mother’s veins, the flower of war.
Nay, sirs, but let us bring this thing to pass;
Then, taking counsel, choose meet brides for you.’
So I ran on; but o’er the shifting seas
The wind’s breath blew my words, that found no grace
With you, for ye defied the charmer’s voice.
Yet listen to me now if ne’er before:
Lo! we are kinsmen by the father’s side.
But if ye lust for war, if strife must break
Forth among kin, and bloodshed quench our feud,
Bold Polydeuces then shall hold his hands
And his cousin Idas from the abhorrèd fray:
While I and Castor, the two younger-born,
Try war’s arbitrament; so spare our sires
Sorrow exceeding. In one house one dead
Sufficeth: let the others glad their mates,
To the bride-chamber passing, not the grave,
And o’er yon maids sing jubilee. Well it were
At cost so small to lay so huge a strife.”