Sing, Muse, this chief of Hermes’ love-got joys,
Goat-footed, two-horn’d, amorous of noise,
That through the fair greens, all adorn’d with trees,
Together goes with Nymphs, whose nimble knees
Can every dance foot, that affect to scale
The most inaccessible tops of all
Uprightest rocks, and ever use to call
On Pan, the bright-hair’d God of pastoral;
Who yet is lean and loveless, and doth owe
By lot all loftiest mountains crown’d with snow;
All tops of hills, and cliffy highnesses,
All sylvan copses, and the fortresses
Of thorniest queaches, here and there doth rove,
And sometimes, by allurement of his love,
Will wade the wat’ry softnesses. Sometimes
(In quite oppos’d _capriccios_) he climbs
The hardest rocks, and highest, every way
Running their ridges. Often will convey
Himself up to a watch-tow’r’s top, where sheep
Have their observance. Oft through hills as steep
His goats he runs upon, and never rests.
Then turns he head, and flies on savage beasts,
Mad of their slaughters; so most sharp an eye
Setting upon them, as his beams let fly
Through all their thickest tapistries. And then
(When Hesp’rus calls to fold the flocks of men)
From the green clossets of his loftiest reeds
He rushes forth, and joy with song he feeds.
When, under shadow of their motions set,
He plays a verse forth so profoundly sweet,
As not the bird that in the flow’ry spring,
Amidst the leaves set, makes the thickets ring
Of her sour sorrows, sweeten’d with her song,
Runs her divisions varied so and strong.
And then the sweet-voic’d Nymphs that crown his mountains
(Flock’d round about the deep-black-water’d fountains)
Fall in with their contention of song.
To which the echoes all the hills along
Their repercussions add. Then here and there
(Plac’d in the midst) the God the guide doth bear
Of all their dances, winding in and out,
A lynce’s hide, besprinkled round about
With blood, cast on his shoulders. And thus He,
With well-made songs, maintains th’ alacrity
Of his free mind, in silken meadows crown’d
With hyacinths and saffrons, that abound
In sweet-breath’d odours, that th’ unnumber’d grass
(Besides their scents) give as through all they pass.
And these, in all their pleasures, ever raise
The blessed Gods’ and long Olympus’ praise:
Like zealous Hermes, who of all I said
Most profits up to all the Gods convey’d.
Who, likewise, came into th’ Arcadian state,
(That’s rich in fountains, and all celebrate
For nurse of flocks,) where He had vow’d a grove
(Surnam’d Cyllenius) to his Godhead’s love.
Yet even himself (although a God he were)
Clad in a squalid sheepskin, govern’d there
A mortal’s sheep. For soft love ent’ring him
Conform’d his state to his conceited trim,
And made him long, in an extreme degree,
T’ enjoy the fair-hair’d virgin Dryope.
Which ere he could, she made consummate
The flourishing rite of Hymen’s honour’d state;
And brought him such a piece of progeny
As show’d, at first sight, monstrous to the eye,
Goat-footed, two-horn’d, full of noise even then,
And (opposite quite to other childeren)
Told, in sweet laughter, he ought death no tear.
Yet straight his mother start, and fled, in fear,
The sight of so unsatisfying a thing,
In whose face put forth such a bristled spring.
Yet the most useful Mercury embrac’d,
And took into his arms, his homely-fac’d,
Beyond all measure joyful with his sight;
And up to heaven with him made instant flight,
Wrapp’d in the warm skin of a mountain hare,
Set him by Jove, and made most merry fare
To all the Deities else with his son’s sight;
Which most of all fill’d Bacchus with delight;
And Pan they call’d him, since he brought to all
Of mirth so rare and full a festival.
And thus all honour to the shepherds’ King,
For sacrifice to thee my Muse shall sing!