Who hates not living Bavius, let him be (Dead Mævius!) damn'd to love thy works and thee! The same ill taste of sense would serve to join Dog-foxes in the yoke, and shear the swine. DAMOETAS. Ye boys, who pluck the flowers, and spoil the spring, Beware the secret snake that shoots a sting. MENALCAS. Graze not too near the banks, my jolly sheep; The ground is false, the running streams are deep: See, they have caught the father of the flock, Who dries his fleece upon the neighbouring rock. DAMOETAS. From rivers drive the kids, and sling your hook; Anon I'll wash them in the shallow brook. MENALCAS. To fold, my flock!--when milk is dried with heat, In vain the milkmaid tugs an empty teat. DAMOETAS. How lank my bulls from plenteous pasture come! But love, that drains the herd, destroys the groom. MENALCAS. My flocks are free from love, yet look so thin, Their bones are barely covered with their skin. What magic has bewitched the woolly dams, And what ill eyes beheld the tender lambs? DAMOETAS. Say, where the round of heaven, which all contains, } To three short ells on earth our sight restrains: } Tell that, and rise a Phoebus for thy pains. } MENALCAS. Nay, tell me first, in what new region springs A flower, that bears inscribed the names of kings; And thou shalt gain a present as divine As Phoebus' self; for Phyllis shall be thine. PALÆMON. So nice a difference in your singing lies, That both have won, or both deserved the prize. Rest equal happy both; and all who prove The bitter sweets, and pleasing pains, of love. Now dam the ditches, and the floods restrain; Their moisture has already drenched the plain. FOOTNOTES: [297] Phoebus, not Pan, is here called the god of shepherds. The poet alludes to the same story which he touches in the beginning of the Second Georgic, where he calls Phoebus the Amphrysian shepherd, because he fed the sheep and oxen of Admetus, with whom he was in love, on the hill Amphrysus. PASTORAL IV. OR, _POLLIO_. ARGUMENT. _The Poet celebrates the birth-day of Saloninus, the son of Pollio, born in the consulship of his father, after the taking of Salonæ, a city in Dalmatia. Many of the verses are translated from one of the Sibyls, who prophesied of our Saviour's birth._