'Ye flowers, now in sad clusters breathe yourselves away. Now redden, ye
roses, in your sorrow, and now wax red, ye wind-flowers; now, thou
hyacinth, whisper the letters on thee graven, and add a deeper ai ai to
thy petals: he is dead, the beautiful singer.... Ye nightingales that
lament among the thick leaves of the trees, tell ye to the Sicilian
waters of Arethusa the tidings that Bion the herdsman is dead.... Thy
sudden doom, O Bion, Apollo himself lamented, and the Satyrs mourned
thee, and the Priapi in sable raiment, and the Panes sorrow for thy
song, and the Fountain-fairies in the wood made moan, and their tears
turned to rivers of waters. And Echo in the rocks laments that thou art
silent, and no more she mimics thy voice. And in sorrow for thy fall the
trees cast down their fruit, and all the flowers have faded.... Nor ever
sang so sweet the nightingale on the cliffs,... nor so much, by the grey
sea-waves, did ever the sea-bird sing, nor so much in the dells of dawn
did the bird of Memnon bewail the son of the Morning, fluttering around
his tomb, as they lamented for Bion dead.... Echo, among the reeds, doth
still feed upon thy songs.... This, O most musical of rivers, is thy
second sorrow,--this, Meles, thy new woe. Of old didst thou lose
Homer:... now again another son thou weepest, and in a new sorrow art
thou wasting away.... Nor so much did pleasant Lesbos mourn for Alcaeus,
nor did the Teian town so greatly bewail her poet,... and not for Sappho
but still for thee doth Mitylene wail her musical lament.... Ah me! when
the mallows wither in the garden, and the green parsley, and the curled
tendrils of the anise, on a later day they live again, and spring In
another year: but we men, we the great and mighty or wise, when once we
have died, in hollow earth we sleep, gone down into silence.... Poison
came, Bion, to thy mouth--thou didst know poison. To such lips as thine
did it come, and was not sweetened? What mortal was so cruel that could
mix poison for thee, or who could give thee the venom that heard thy
voice? Surely he had no music in his soul,... But justice hath overtaken
them all.'
Bion was born in Smyrna, or in a neighbouring village named Phlossa, and
may have died at some date not far from 250 B.C. The statement of
Moschus that Bion was poisoned by certain enemies appears to be intended
as an assertion of actual fact. Of Moschus nothing distinct is known,
beyond his being a native of Sicily.