Ye Dorian woods and waves, lament aloud,—
Augment your tide, O streams, with fruitless tears,
For the beloved Bion is no more.
Let every tender herb and plant and flower,
From each dejected bud and drooping bloom,
5
Shed dews of liquid sorrow, and with breath
Of melancholy sweetness on the wind
Diffuse its languid love; let roses blush,
Anemones grow paler for the loss
Their dells have known; and thou, O hyacinth,
10
Utter thy legend now—yet more, dumb flower,
Than ’Ah! alas!’—thine is no
common grief—
Bion the [sweetest singer] is no more.
NOTE:
2 tears]sorrow (as alternative) Hunt manuscript.
***
FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS.
[Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]
Tan ala tan glaukan otan onemos atrema Balle—k.t.l.
When winds that move not its calm surface sweep
The azure sea, I love the land no more;
The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep
Tempt my unquiet mind.—But when the roar
Of Ocean’s gray abyss resounds, and foam
5
Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst,
I turn from the drear aspect to the home
Of Earth and its deep woods, where, interspersed,
When winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody.
Whose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea,
10
Whose prey the wandering fish, an evil lot
Has chosen.—But I my languid limbs will
fling
Beneath the plane, where the brook’s murmuring
Moves the calm spirit, but disturbs it not.
***
PAN, ECHO, AND THE SATYR.
FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS.
[Published (without title) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. There is a draft amongst the Hunt manuscripts.]
Pan loved his neighbour Echo—but that child
Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping;
The Satyr loved with wasting madness wild
The bright nymph Lyda,—and so three went
weeping.
As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr,
5
The Satyr, Lyda; and so love consumed them.—
And thus to each—which was a woful matter—
To bear what they inflicted Justice doomed them;
For, inasmuch as each might hate the lover,
Each, loving, so was hated.—Ye that love
not 10
Be warned—in thought turn this example
over,
That when ye love, the like return ye prove not.
NOTE:
6 so Hunt manuscript; thus 1824.
11 So 1824; This lesson timely in your thoughts
turn over, The moral of
this song in thought turn
over (as alternatives) Hunt manuscript.
***
FROM VERGIL’S TENTH ECLOGUE.
[VERSES 1-26.]
[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870, from the Boscombe manuscripts now in the Bodleian. Mr. Locock ("Examination”, etc., 1903, pages 47-50), as the result of his collation of the same manuscripts, gives a revised and expanded version which we print below.]