_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.
’Twas surely thus the Cyclops fleeted his life most easily, he that dwelt
among us,—Polyphemus of old time,—when the beard was yet young on his
cheek and chin; and he loved Galatea. He loved, not with apples, not
roses, nor locks of hair, but with fatal frenzy, and all things else he
held but trifles by the way. Many a time from the green pastures would
his ewes stray back, self-shepherded, to the fold. But he was singing of
Galatea, and pining in his place he sat by the sea-weed of the beach,
from the dawn of day, with the direst hurt beneath his breast of mighty
Cypris’s sending,—the wound of her arrow in his heart!
Yet this remedy he found, and sitting on the crest of the tall cliff, and
looking to the deep, ’twas thus he would sing:—
_Song of the Cyclops_.
O milk-white Galatea, why cast off him that loves thee? More white than
is pressed milk to look upon, more delicate than the lamb art thou, than
the young calf wantoner, more sleek than the unripened grape! Here dust
thou resort, even so, when sweet sleep possesses me, and home straightway
dost thou depart when sweet sleep lets me go, fleeing me like an ewe that
has seen the grey wolf.
I fell in love with thee, maiden, I, on the day when first thou camest,
with my mother, and didst wish to pluck the hyacinths from the hill, and
I was thy guide on the way. But to leave loving thee, when once I had
seen thee, neither afterward, nor now at all, have I the strength, even
from that hour. But to thee all this is as nothing, by Zeus, nay,
nothing at all!
I know, thou gracious maiden, why it is that thou dust shun me. It is
all for the shaggy brow that spans all my forehead, from this to the
other ear, one long unbroken eyebrow. And but one eye is on my forehead,
and broad is the nose that overhangs my lip. Yet I (even such as thou
seest me) feed a thousand cattle, and from these I draw and drink the
best milk in the world. And cheese I never lack, in summer time or
autumn, nay, nor in the dead of winter, but my baskets are always
overladen.
Also I am skilled in piping, as none other of the Cyclopes here, and of
thee, my love, my sweet-apple, and of myself too I sing, many a time,
deep in the night. And for thee I tend eleven fawns, all
crescent-browed, {61} and four young whelps of the bear.
Nay, come thou to me, and thou shalt lack nothing that now thou hast.
Leave the grey sea to roll against the land; more sweetly, in this
cavern, shalt thou fleet the night with me! Thereby the laurels grow,
and there the slender cypresses, there is the ivy dun, and the sweet
clustered grapes; there is chill water, that for me deep-wooded Ætna
sends down from the white snow, a draught divine! Ah who, in place of
these, would choose the sea to dwell in, or the waves of the sea?
But if thou dust refuse because my body seems shaggy and rough, well, I
have faggots of oakwood, and beneath the ashes is fire unwearied, and I
would endure to let thee burn my very soul, and this my one eye, the
dearest thing that is mine.
Ah me, that my mother bore me not a finny thing, so would I have gone
down to thee, and kissed thy hand, if thy lips thou would not suffer me
to kiss! And I would have brought thee either white lilies, or the soft
poppy with its scarlet petals. Nay, these are summer’s flowers, and
those are flowers of winter, so I could not have brought thee them all at
one time.
Now, verily, maiden, now and here will I learn to swim, if perchance some
stranger come hither, sailing with his ship, that I may see why it is so
dear to thee, to have thy dwelling in the deep.
Come forth, Galatea, and forget as thou comest, even as I that sit here
have forgotten, the homeward way! Nay, choose with me to go shepherding,
with me to milk the flocks, and to pour the sharp rennet in, and to fix
the cheeses.
There is none that wrongs me but that mother of mine, and her do I blame.
Never, nay, never once has she spoken a kind word for me to thee, and
that though day by day she beholds me wasting. I will tell her that my
head, and both my feet are throbbing, that she may somewhat suffer, since
I too am suffering.
O Cyclops, Cyclops, whither are thy wits wandering? Ah that thou wouldst
go, and weave thy wicker-work, and gather broken boughs to carry to thy
lambs: in faith, if thou didst this, far wiser wouldst thou be!
Milk the ewe that thou hast, why pursue the thing that shuns thee? Thou
wilt find, perchance, another, and a fairer Galatea. Many be the girls
that bid me play with them through the night, and softly they all laugh,
if perchance I answer them. On land it is plain that I too seem to be
somebody!
* * * * *
Lo, thus Polyphemus still shepherded his love with song, and lived
lighter than if he had given gold for ease.
IDYL XII
THE PASSIONATE FRIEND
_This is rather a lyric than an idyl_, _being an expression of that
singular passion which existed between men in historical Greece_. _The
next idyl_, _like the Myrmidons of Aeschylus_, _attributes the same
manners to mythical and heroic Greece_. _It should be unnecessary to say
that the affection between Homeric warriors_, _like Achilles and
Patroclus_, _was only that of companions in arms and was quite unlike the
later sentiment_.
* * * * *
HAST thou come, dear youth, with the third night and the dawning; hast
thou come? but men in longing grow old in a day! As spring than the
winter is sweeter, as the apple than the sloe, as the ewe is deeper of
fleece than the lamb she bore; as a maiden surpasses a thrice-wedded
wife, as the fawn is nimbler than the calf; nay, by as much as sweetest
of all fowls sings the clear-voiced nightingale, so much has thy coming
gladdened me! To thee have I hastened as the traveller hastens under the
burning sun to the shadow of the ilex tree.
Ah, would that equally the Loves may breathe upon us twain, may we become
a song in the ears of all men unborn.
‘Lo, a pair were these two friends among the folk of former time,’ the
one ‘the Knight’ (so the Amyclaeans call him), the other, again, ‘the
Page,’ so styled in speech of Thessaly.
‘An equal yoke of friendship they bore: ah, surely then there were golden
men of old, when friends gave love for love!’
And would, O father Cronides, and would, ye ageless immortals, that this
might be; and that when two hundred generations have sped, one might
bring these tidings to me by Acheron, the irremeable stream.
‘The loving-kindness that was between thee and thy gracious friend, is
even now in all men’s mouths, and chiefly on the lips of the young.’
Nay, verily, the gods of heaven will be masters of these things, to rule
them as they will, but when I praise thy graciousness no blotch that
punishes the perjurer shall spring upon the tip of my nose! Nay, if ever
thou hast somewhat pained me, forthwith thou healest the hurt, giving a
double delight, and I depart with my cup full and running over!
Nisaean men of Megara, ye champions of the oars, happily may ye dwell,
for that ye honoured above all men the Athenian stranger, even Diodes,
the true lover. Always about his tomb the children gather in their
companies, at the coming in of the spring, and contend for the prize of
kissing. And whoso most sweetly touches lip to lip, laden with garlands
he returneth to his mother. Happy is he that judges those kisses of the
children; surely he prays most earnestly to bright-faced Ganymedes, that
his lips may be as the Lydian touchstone wherewith the money-changers try
gold lest perchance base metal pass for true.
IDYL XIII
HYLAS AND HERACLES
_As in the eleventh Idyl_, _Nicias is again addressed_, _by way of
introduction to the story of Hylas_. _This beautiful lad_, _a favourite
companion of Heracles_, _took part in the Quest of the Fleece of Gold_.
_As he went to draw water from a fountain_, _the water-nymphs dragged him
down to their home_, _and Heracles_, _after a long and vain search_, _was
compelled to follow the heroes of the Quest on foot to Phasis_.
* * * * *
NOT for us only, Nicias, as we were used to deem, was Love begotten, by
whomsoever of the Gods was the father of the child; not first to us
seemed beauty beautiful, to us that are mortal men and look not on the
morrow. Nay, but the son of Amphitryon, that heart of bronze, who abode
the wild lion’s onset, loved a lad, beautiful Hylas—Hylas of the braided
locks, and he taught him all things as a father teaches his child, all
whereby himself became a mighty man, and renowned in minstrelsy. Never
was he apart from Hylas, not when midnoon was high in heaven, not when
Dawn with her white horses speeds upwards to the dwelling of Zeus, not
when the twittering nestlings look towards the perch, while their mother
flaps her wings above the smoke-browned beam; and all this that the lad
might be fashioned to his mind, and might drive a straight furrow, and
come to the true measure of man.
But when Iason, Aeson’s son, was sailing after the fleece of gold (and
with him followed the champions, the first chosen out of all the cities,
they that were of most avail), to rich Iolcos too came the mighty man and
adventurous, the son of the woman of Midea, noble Alcmene. With him went
down Hylas also, to Argo of the goodly benches, the ship that grazed not
on the clashing rocks Cyanean, but through she sped and ran into deep
Phasis, as an eagle over the mighty gulf of the sea. And the clashing
rocks stand fixed, even from that hour!
Now at the rising of the Pleiades, when the upland fields begin to
pasture the young lambs, and when spring is already on the wane, then the
flower divine of Heroes bethought them of sea-faring. On board the
hollow Argo they sat down to the oars, and to the Hellespont they came
when the south wind had been for three days blowing, and made their haven
within Propontis, where the oxen of the Cianes wear bright the
ploughshare, as they widen the furrows. Then they went forth upon the
shore, and each couple busily got ready supper in the late evening, and
many as they were one bed they strewed lowly on the ground, for they
found a meadow lying, rich in couches of strown grass and leaves. Thence
they cut them pointed flag-leaves, and deep marsh-galingale. And Hylas
of the yellow hair, with a vessel of bronze in his hand, went to draw
water against suppertime, for Heracles himself, and the steadfast
Telamon, for these comrades twain supped ever at one table. Soon was he
ware of a spring, in a hollow land, and the rushes grew thickly round it,
and dark swallow-wort, and green maiden-hair, and blooming parsley, and
deer-grass spreading through the marshy land. In the midst of the water
the nymphs were arraying their dances, the sleepless nymphs, dread
goddesses of the country people, Eunice, and Malis, and Nycheia, with her
April eyes. And now the boy was holding out the wide-mouthed pitcher to
the water, intent on dipping it, but the nymphs all clung to his hand,
for love of the Argive lad had fluttered the soft hearts of all of them.
Then down he sank into the black water, headlong all, as when a star
shoots flaming from the sky, plumb in the deep it falls, and a mate
shouts out to the seamen, ‘Up with the gear, my lads, the wind is fair
for sailing.’
Then the nymphs held the weeping boy on their laps, and with gentle words
were striving to comfort him. But the son of Amphitryon was troubled
about the lad, and went forth, carrying his bended bow in Scythian
fashion, and the club that is ever grasped in his right hand. Thrice he
shouted ‘Hylas!’ as loud as his deep throat could call, and thrice again
the boy heard him, and thin came his voice from the water, and, hard by
though he was, he seemed very far away. And as when a bearded lion, a
ravening lion on the hills, hears the bleating of a fawn afar off, and
rushes forth from his lair to seize it, his readiest meal, even so the
mighty Heracles, in longing for the lad, sped through the trackless
briars, and ranged over much country.
Reckless are lovers: great toils did Heracles bear, in hills and thickets
wandering, and Iason’s quest was all postponed to this. Now the ship
abode with her tackling aloft, and the company gathered there, {70} but
at midnight the young men were lowering the sails again, awaiting
Heracles. But he wheresoever his feet might lead him went wandering in
his fury, for the cruel Goddess of love was rending his heart within him.
Thus loveliest Hylas is numbered with the Blessed, but for a runaway they
girded at Heracles, the heroes, because he roamed from Argo of the sixty
oarsmen. But on foot he came to Colchis and inhospitable Phasis.