Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost

Your hapless master now to you is lost:
My shepherd-friends, by various tastes inclined,
Direct my steps the sweetest spot to find.
This likes the hazel,-that the beechen grove:
One bids me here,-one there for pleasure rove:
Ægon the willow's pensile shade delights;
And gay Amyntas to the streams invites :
"Here are cool fountains: here is mossy grass:
"Here zephyrs softly whisper as they pass:

"From this bright spring yon arbute draws her green,
"The pride and beauty of the sylvan scene."
Deaf is my woe;—and, while they speak in vain,
I plunge into the copse, and hide my pain.
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost,
Mopsus surprised me in my sullen mood,
(Mopsus who knew the language of the wood;
Knew all the stars, could all their junctions spell,)
And thus," What passions in your bosom swell?
"Speak! flows the poison from disastrous love?
"Or falls the mischief star-sent from above?
"For leaden Saturn, with his chill controli,
"Oft has shot blights into the shepherd's soul."

Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost,

The wond'ring nymphs exclaim," What, Thyrsis, now?
"Those heavy eyelids, and that cloudy brow
"Become not youth:-to youth the jocund song,

Frolic, and dance, and wanton wiles belong:
"With these he courts the joys which suit his state:
"Ah! twice unhappy he,.who loves too late!"

Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost.

With Dryope and Hyas, Ægle came,

A lovely lyrist, but a scornful dame.

From Chelmer's banks fair Chloris join'd the train.
But vain their blandishments, their solace vain.-

Dead is my hope, and pointless beauty's dart
To waken torpid pleasure in my heart.

Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost.

How blest, where, none repulsed and none preferr'd,
One common friendship blends the lowing herd!
Touch'd by no subtle magnet in the mind,
Each meets a comrade when he meets his kind.
Conspiring wolves enjoy this equal love,
And this the zebra's party-colour'd drove:
This too the tribes of ocean, and the flock
Which Proteus feeds beneath his vaulted rock.
The sparrow, fearless of a lonely state,

Has ever for his social wing a mate :

Whom should the falcon or the marksman strike,
He soon repairs his loss, and finds a like.
But we, by fate's severer frown oppress'd,
With war, and sharp repulsion in the breast,
Can scarcely meet, amid the human throng,
One kindred soul, or, met, preserve him long.
When fortune, now determined to be kind,
Yields the rich gift, and mind is link'd to mind,
Death mocks the fond possession, bursts the chain,
And plants the bosom with perennial pain. ›

Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost.
Alas, what madness tempted me to stray
Where other suns on distant regions play?
To tread aerial paths and Alpine snows,
Scared by stern nature's terrible repose?
Ah! could the sepulchre of buried Rome
Thus urge my frantic foot to spurn my home?
Though Rome were now, as once, in pomp array'd,
She drew the Mantuan from his flock and shade;
Ah! could she lure me from thy faithful side;
Lead me where rocks would part us, floods divide;
Forests and lofty mountains intervene ; ·

Whole realms extend, and oceans roar between?

L

Ah, wretch! denied to press thy fainting hand,
Close thy dim eyes, and catch thy last command;
To say, "My friend, O think of all our love,
"And bear it glowing to the realms above."
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost.
Yet must I not deplore the hours that flew,
Ye Tuscan swains, with science and with you:
Each Grace and Muse is yours,'-and yours my Da-

mon too.

From ancient Lucca's Tuscan walls he came,
With you in country, talents, arts the same.
How happy, lull'd by Arno's warbling stream,
Hid by his poplars from day's flaring beam,
When, stretch'd along the fragrant moss, I lay,
And cull'd the violet, or pluck'd the bay;
Or heard, contending for the rural prize,
Fam'd Lycid's and Menalcas' melodies.
I too essay'd to sing:-nor vainly sung:
This flute, these baskets speak my
victor tongue:
And Datis and Francinus, swains who trace
Their Tuscan lineage to the Lydian race,'
Dear to the Muses both, with friendly care
Taught their carved trees my favour'd name to bear.
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost.
Then, as the moonbeam slumber'd on the plain,
I penn'd my fold, and sung in cheerful strain:
And oft exclaim'd, unconscious of my doom,
As your pale ashes moulder'd in the tomb,
"Now is he singing:-now my friend prepares
"His twisted osiers, or his wiry snares."
Then would rash fancy on the future seize,
And hail you present in such words as these:-
"What loitering here? unless some cause dissuade,
"Haste and enjoy with me the whispering shade;
"Or where his course the lucid Colnus bends;
"Or where Cassibelan's domain extends.

"

There show what herbs in vale or upland grow; "The harebell's ringlet, and the saffron's glow:

"There teach me all the physic of the plains,
"What healing virtues swell the floret's veins."
Ah! perish all the healing plants, confest

Too weak to save the swain, who knew them best!
As late a new-compacted pipe I found,

It gave beneath my lips a loftier sound;
Too high, indeed, the notes, for as it spoke,
The waxen junctures in the labour broke.
Smile as you may,-I will not hide from you
The ambitious strain;-ye woods, awhile, adieu!
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost.
High on Rutupium's cliffs, my Muse shall hail
The first white gleamings of the Dardan sail:
Shall sing the realms by Inogen controll'd,
And Brennus, Arvirage, and Belin old:
Shall sing Armorica, at length subdued
By British steel in Gallic blood imbrued:
And Uther in the form of Gorlois led,
By Merlin's fraud, to lögerne's bed;

Whence Arthur sprang. If length of days be mine,
My shepherd's pipe shall hang on yon old pine,
In long neglect; or, tuned to British strains,
With British airs shall please my native swains.
But wherefore so? alas! no human mind
Can hope for audience all the human kind.
Enough for me, I ask no more renown,
(Lost to the world, to Britain only known,)

He expresses the same generous and patriotic sentiment in one of his prose tracts. "For which cause, and not only for that I knew it would be hard to arrive at the second rank among the Latins, I applied myself to that resolution, which Ariosto followed, against the persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art, I could unite, to the adorning of my native

If yellow-tressed Usa read my lays;

Alain and gulphy Humber sound my praise;
Trent's sylvan echoes answer to my song;

My own dear Thames my warbled notes prolong;
Ore-tinctured Tamar own me for her bard;
And Thule, 'mid her utmost flood, regard.
Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost
Your hapless master now to you is lost.

These lays, and more like these, for thee design'd,
I wrote and folded in a laurel's rind.

For thee I also kept, of antique mould,
Two spacious goblets, rough with labour'd gold.
(Rare was the gift, but yet the giver more,-
Mansus, the pride of the Chalcidian shore.)
In bold existence, from the workman's hand,
Two subjects on their fretted surface stand.
Here, by the red-sea coast, in length display'd,
Arabia pants beneath her odorous shade:
And here the phoenix, from his spicy throne,
In heavenly plumage radiant, and alone,
Himself a kind, beholds, with flamy sight,
The wave first kindle with the morning light.

tongue; not to make verbal curiosities the end, (that were a toilsome vanity,) but to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things, among mine own citizens throughout this island in the mother dialect. That what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old did for their country, I, in my proportion, with this over and above, of being a christian, might do for mine; not caring to be once named abroad, though perhaps I could attain to that, but content with these British islands as my world; whose fortune hath hitherto been, that if the Athenians, as some say, made their small deeds great and renowned by their eloquent writers, England hath had her noble achieve ments made small by the unskilful handling of monks and mechanics." P.W. vol. i. 119.