Page:The Amyntas of Tasso (1770) - Percival Stockdale.djvu/109

THYRSIS.
 Daphne, a ^[1]god bestowed this affluence on me;
For he shall ever be a god to me.
By all our swains he should be deemed a god.
'Tis he whose lowing herds, and bleating flocks,
Are spread through Italy to either sea;
They're pampered on our most luxuriant plains,
And live more hardly on our Apennines.
When first my patron to his service took me,
He thus addressed his swain in words benign:
"Thyrsis, let others guard from wolves, and robbers
"My well-fenced folds; let others to my servants
"Justly dispense rewards and punishments;
"Let others feed my flocks, and have the charge
"Of milk, and wool, and all the rural stores:
"Let finer objects fill thy tuneful mind,

1. Alphonso II. duke of Ferrara: Tasso had reason afterwards to think him a devil. Virgil made a god of a Roman emperour, upon a similar occasion. The Italians still look upon their dukes to be gods, Nobility stands not quite so high in the estimation of Englishmen.

"And