[Footnote 4: Before the edition of 1736 the couplet ran thus:
To whose complaints the list'ning forests bend,
While one his mistress mourns, and one his friend.
In keeping with this announcement the song of Hylas, which forms the
first portion of the Pastoral, was devoted to mourning an absent
_shepherd_, and not, as at present, an absent _shepherdess_. When Pope
made his lines commemorative of love, instead of friendship, he did
little more than change the name of the man (Thyrsis) to that of a woman
(Delia), and substitute the feminine for the masculine pronoun. The
extravagant idea expressed in the first line of the rejected couplet is
found in Oldham's translation of Moschus:
And trees leaned their attentive branches down.