_Melibœus._ Stretched in the shadow of the broad beech, thou Rehearsest, Tityrus, on the slender pipe Thy woodland music. We our fatherland Are leaving, we must shun the fields we love: While, Tityrus, thou, at ease amid the shade, Bidd’st answering woods call Amaryllis “fair.” _Tityrus._ O Melibœus! ’tis a god that made For me this holiday: for a god I’ll aye Account him; many a young lamb from my fold Shall stain his altar. Thanks to him, my kine Range as thou seest them: thanks to him, I play What songs I list upon my shepherd’s pipe.[52] In the dialogue that follows, Tityrus, who represents Virgil himself, speaks of his visit to Rome and his meeting with Augustus: There, Melibœus, I beheld that youth For whom each year twelve days my altars smoke. Thus answered he my yet unanswered prayer, “Feed still, my lads, your kine, and yoke your bulls.”[53] The fourth _Eclogue_, addressed to Pollio, and written in the year of his consulship (40 B. C.), celebrates in prophetic and lofty language the birth of a child. As the child grows the world is to become better, until the golden age of peace and good-will among men shall come again. This poem was, curiously enough, long supposed to be an inspired prophecy of the coming of Christ. Who the child really was is uncertain, but there is some evidence that Gaius Asinius Gallus, Pollio’s son, is meant. The lofty tone is struck with the very opening of the poem: Muses of Sicily, a loftier song Wake we! Some tire of shrubs and myrtles low. Are woods our theme? Then princely be the woods. Come are those last days that the Sibyl sang; The ages’ mighty march begins anew. Now comes the virgin, Saturn reigns again; Now from high heaven descends a wondrous race. Thou on the new-born babe—who first shall end That age of iron, bid a golden dawn Upon the broad world—chaste Lucina, smile: Now thy Apollo reigns. And Pollio, thou Shalt be our Prince, when he that grander age Opens, and onward roll the mighty moons: Thou, trampling out what prints our crimes have left, Shalt free the nations from perpetual fear. While he to bliss shall waken; with the Blest See the Brave mingling, and be seen of them, Ruling that world o’er which his father’s arm shed peace.[54] But the atmosphere of the _Eclogues_ is generally that of the country, and the form that of dialogue, with competitive songs by the herdsmen. The opening lines of the fifth _Eclogue_ may serve as an example. The characters are Menalcas and Mopsus: _Men._ Mopsus, suppose now two good men have met— You at flute-blowing, as at verses I— We sit down here, where elm and hazel mix.