Basilius, because Zelmane so would have it, used the artificial day of torches, to lighten the sports their invention could minister: and because many of the shepherds were but newly come, he did {98} in a gentle manner chastise their negligence, with making them, for that night the torch bearers; and the others he willed with all freedom of speech and behaviour to keep their accustomed method, which while they prepared to do, Dametas, who much disdained, since his late authority, all his old companions, brought his servant Dorus in good acquaintance and allowance of them, and himself stood like a director over them, with nodding, gaping, winking, or stamping, showing how he did like or mislike those things he did not understand. The first sports the shepherds showed were full of such leaps and gambols as being according to the pipe which they bore in their mouths, even as they danced, made a right picture of their chief god Pan, and his companions the Satyrs. Then would they cast away their pipes, and holding hand in hand dance as it were in a brawl, by the only cadence of their voices, which they would use in singing some short couplets, whereto the one half beginning, the other half should answer as the one half, saying: We love, and have our loves rewarded. The other would answer, We love, and are no whit regarded. The first again, We find most sweet affection’s snare. With like tune it should be as in a choir sent back again, That sweet, but sour, despairful care. A third time likewise thus: Who can despair, whom hope doth bear? The answer, And who can hope that feels despair? Then joining all their voices, and dancing a faster measure, they would conclude with some such words: As without breath no pipe doth move, No music kindly without love. Having thus varied both their song and dances into divers sorts of inventions, their last sport was, one of them to provoke another to a more large expressing of his passions: which Thyrsis (accounted one of the best singers amongst them) having marked in Dorus’s dancing, no less good grace and handsome behaviour than extreme tokens of a troubled mind, began first with his pipe, and then with his voice, thus to challenge Dorus, and was by him answered in the under-written sort. THE FIRST ECLOGUES {99} THYRSIS and DORUS THYRSIS Come Dorus, come, let songs thy sorrows signify, And if for want of use thy mind ashamed is, That very shame with love’s high title dignify. No style is held for base where love well named is: Each ear sucks up the words a true-love scattereth, And plain speech oft, than quaint phrase better framed is.