Would it were mine, all the wealth whereof once Croesus was lord, as men tell! Then images of us twain, all in gold, should be dedicated to Aphrodite, thou with thy flute, and a rose, yea, or an apple, and I in fair attire, and new shoon of Amyclae on both my feet. Ah gracious Bombyca, thy feet are fashioned like carven ivory, thy voice is drowsy sweet, and thy ways, I cannot tell of them! {57} _Milan_. Verily our clown was a maker of lovely songs, and we knew it not! How well he meted out and shaped his harmony; woe is me for the beard that I have grown, all in vain! Come, mark thou too these lines of godlike Lityerses THE LITYERSES SONG. _Demeter_, _rich in fruit_, _and rich in grain_, _may this corn be easy to win_, _and fruitful exceedingly_! _Bind_, _ye bandsters_, _the sheaves_, _lest the wayfarer __should cry_, ‘_Men of straw were the workers here_, _ay_, _and their hire was wasted_!’ _See that the cut stubble faces the North wind_, _or the West_, _’tis thus the grain waxes richest_. _They that thresh corn should shun the noon-day steep_; _at noon the chaff parts easiest from the straw_. _As for the reapers_, _let them begin when the crested lark is waking_, _and cease when he sleeps_, _but take holiday in the heat_. _Lads_, _the frog has a jolly life_, _he is not cumbered about a butler to his drink_, _for he has liquor by him unstinted_! _Boil the lentils better_, _thou miserly steward_; _take heed lest thou chop thy fingers_, _when thou’rt splitting cumin-seed_. ’Tis thus that men should sing who labour i’ the sun, but thy starveling love, thou clod, ’twere fit to tell to thy mother when she stirs in bed at dawning. IDYL XI THE CYCLOPS IN LOVE _Nicias_, _the physician and poet_, _being in love_, _Theocritus reminds him that in song lies the only remedy_. _It was by song_, _he says_, _that the Cyclops_, _Polyphemus_, _got him some ease_, _when he was in love with Galatea_, _the sea-nymph_. _The idyl displays_, _in the most graceful manner_, _the Alexandrian taste for turning Greek mythology into love stories_. _No creature could be more remote from love than the original Polyphemus_, _the cannibal giant of the Odyssey_. * * * * * THERE is none other medicine, Nicias, against Love, neither unguent, methinks, nor salve to sprinkle,—none, save the Muses of Pieria! Now a delicate thing is their minstrelsy in man’s life, and a sweet, but hard to procure. Methinks thou know’st this well, who art thyself a leech, and beyond all men art plainly dear to the Muses nine.