The poplar is by great Alcides worn; The brows of Phoebus his own bays adorn; The branching vine the jolly Bacchus loves; The Cyprian queen delights in myrtle groves; With hazle Phyllis crowns her flowing hair; } And, while she loves that common wreath to wear, } Nor bays, nor myrtle boughs, with hazle shall compare. } THYRSIS. The towering ash is fairest in the woods; In gardens pines, and poplars by the floods: But, if my Lycidas will ease my pains, And often visit our forsaken plains, To him the towering ash shall yield in woods, In gardens pines, and poplars by the floods. MELIBOEUS. These rhymes I did to memory commend, When vanquished Thyrsis did in vain contend; Since when, 'tis Corydon among the swains: Young Corydon without a rival reigns. PASTORAL VIII.[300] OR, _PHARMACEUTRIA_. ARGUMENT. _This Pastoral contains the Songs of Damon and Alphesiboeus. The first of them bewails the loss of his mistress, and repines at the success of his rival Mopsus. The other repeats the charms of some enchantress, who endeavoured, by her spells and magic, to make Daphnis in love with her._ The mournful muse of two despairing swains, The love rejected, and the lovers' pains; To which the savage lynxes listening stood, The rivers stood on heaps, and stopped the running flood; The hungry herd the needful food refuse-- Of two despairing swains, I sing the mournful muse. Great Pollio! thou, for whom thy Rome prepares The ready triumph of thy finished wars, Whether Timavus or the Illyrian coast, Whatever land or sea, thy presence boast; Is there an hour in fate reserved for me, To sing thy deeds in numbers worthy thee? In numbers like to thine, could I rehearse Thy lofty tragic scenes, thy laboured verse, The world another Sophocles in thee, Another Homer should behold in me. Amidst thy laurels let this ivy twine: Thine was my earliest muse; my latest shall be thine. Scarce from the world the shades of night withdrew, Scarce were the flocks refreshed with morning dew, When Damon, stretched beneath an olive shade, And, wildly staring upwards, thus inveighed Against the conscious gods, and cursed the cruel maid: "Star of the morning, why dost thou delay? Come, Lucifer, drive on the lagging day, While I my Nisa's perjured faith deplore,-- Witness, ye powers, by whom she falsely swore! The gods, alas! are witnesses in vain; Yet shall my dying breath to heaven complain. Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.