_This poem_, _like the preceding one_, _is written in the Aeolic
dialect_. _The first line is quoted from Alcaeus_. _The idyl is
attributed to Theocritus on the evidence of the scholiast on the
Symposium of Plato_.
* * * * *
‘WINE and truth,’ dear child, says the proverb, and in wine are we, and
the truth we must tell. Yes, I will say to thee all that lies in my
soul’s inmost chamber. Thou dost not care to love me with thy whole
heart! I know, for I live half my life in the sight of thy beauty, but
all the rest is ruined. When thou art kind, my day is like the days of
the Blessed, but when thou art unkind, ’tis deep in darkness. How can it
be right thus to torment thy friend? Nay, if thou wilt listen at all,
child, to me, that am thine elder, happier thereby wilt thou be, and some
day thou wilt thank me. Build one nest in one tree, where no fierce
snake can come; for now thou dost perch on one branch to-day, and on
another to-morrow, always seeking what is new. And if a stranger see and
praise thy pretty face, instantly to him thou art more than a friend of
three years’ standing, while him that loved thee first thou holdest no
higher than a friend of three days. Thou savourest, methinks, of the
love of some great one; nay, choose rather all thy life ever to keep the
love of one that is thy peer. If this thou dost thou wilt be well spoken
of by thy townsmen, and Love will never be hard to thee, Love that
lightly vanquishes the minds of men, and has wrought to tenderness my
heart that was of steel. Nay, by thy delicate mouth I approach and
beseech thee, remember that thou wert younger yesteryear, and that we wax
grey and wrinkled, or ever we can avert it; and none may recapture his
youth again, for the shoulders of youth are winged, and we are all too
slow to catch such flying pinions.
Mindful of this thou shouldst be gentler, and love me without guile as I
love thee, so that, when thou hast a manly beard, we may be such friends
as were Achilles and Patroclus!
But, if thou dost cast all I say to the winds to waft afar, and cry, in
anger, ‘Why, why, dost thou torment me?’ then I,—that now for thy sake
would go to fetch the golden apples, or to bring thee Cerberus, the
watcher of the dead,—would not go forth, didst thou stand at the
court-doors and call me. I should have rest from my cruel love.