Albeit care that consumes, with dule assiduous grieving,
Me from the Learnèd Maids (Hortalus!) ever seclude,
Nor can avail sweet births of the Muses thou to deliver
Thought o' my mind; (so much floats it on flooding of ills:
For that the Lethe-wave upsurging of late from abysses, 5
Lavèd my brother's foot, paling with pallor of death,
He whom the Trojan soil, Rhoetean shore underlying,
Buries for ever and aye, forcibly snatched from our sight.
* * * *
I can address; no more shall I hear thee tell of thy doings,
Say, shall I never again, brother all liefer than life, 10
Sight thee henceforth? But I will surely love thee for ever
Ever what songs I sing saddened shall be by thy death;
Such as the Daulian bird 'neath gloom of shadowy frondage
Warbles, of Itys lost ever bemoaning the lot.)
Yet amid grief so great to thee, my Hortalus, send I 15
These strains sung to a mode borrowed from Battiades;
Lest shouldest weet of me thy words, to wandering wind-gusts
Vainly committed, perchance forth of my memory flowed--
As did that apple sent for a furtive giftie by wooer,
In the chaste breast of the Maid hidden a-sudden out-sprang; 20
For did the hapless forget when in loose-girt garment it lurkèd,
Forth would it leap as she rose, scared by her mother's approach,
And while coursing headlong, it rolls far out of her keeping,
O'er the triste virgin's brow flushes the conscious blush.
Though outspent with care and unceasing grief, I am withdrawn, Ortalus,
from the learned Virgins, nor is my soul's mind able to bring forth sweet
babes of the Muses (so much does it waver 'midst ills: for but lately the
wave of the Lethean stream doth lave with its flow the pallid foot of my
brother, whom 'neath the Rhoetean seaboard the Trojan soil doth crush,
thrust from our eyesight. * * * Never again may I salute thee, nor hear thy
converse; never again, O brother, more loved than life, may I see thee in
aftertime. But for all time in truth will I love thee, always will I sing
elegies made gloomy by thy death, such as the Daulian bird pipes 'neath
densest shades of foliage, lamenting the lot of slain Itys.) Yet 'midst
sorrows so deep, O Ortalus, I send thee these verses re-cast from
Battiades, lest thou shouldst credit thy words by chance have slipt from my
mind, given o'er to the wandering winds, as 'twas with that apple, sent as
furtive love-token by the wooer, which outleapt from the virgin's chaste
bosom; for, placed by the hapless girl 'neath her soft vestment, and
forgotten,--when she starts at her mother's approach, out 'tis shaken: and
down it rolls headlong to the ground, whilst a tell-tale flush mantles the
face of the distressed girl.