IV.—[A LOVE-POEM IN THE FORM OF A WAYSIDE INSCRIPTION]
When you turn the corner of yonder lane, sweet Goatherd, where the oak-trees are, you’ll find a new-carved effigy of fig-wood, without legs or ears and the bark still upon it, but nevertheless an able servant of the Cyprian. There’s a brave little sacrificial close runs round it, and a never-ceasing freshet that springs from the rocks there is greened all about with bays and myrtles and fragrant cypress, among which the mother o’ grapes doth spread and twine, and in spring the blackbirds cry their lisping medleys of clear-toned song, and the babbling nightingales cry them back their warblings with the honey voice that sings from their tuneful throats. Thither go, and sit you down and pray that pretty fellow to make cease my love of Daphnis, and I’ll straightway offer him a fat young goat; but should he say me nay, then I’ll make him three sacrifices if he’ll win me his love, a heifer, a shaggy buck-goat, and a pet lamb I am rearing; and may the God hear and heed your prayer.
V.—[AN INSCRIPTION FOR A PICTURE]
’Fore the Nymphs I pray you play me some sweet thing upon the double flute, and I will take my viol and strike up likewise, and neatherd Daphnis shall join with us and make charming music with the
