D A P H N I S.

They were singing, and bathing their eyes with copious moisture,

Mindful of sweet friendship, and of former labors.

But you, offspring of Heroes, to whom Daphnis was joined

By blood, and who went willingly as a companion into every fate,

Daphnis, the same in adversity and prosperity:

You shall fashion a living effigy of the deceased from gleaming marble,

And place it in the sacred seat of the temple

To be seen, so that it may adorn the tomb with renowned honor,

An eternal monument and pledge of your love.

They mourned equally, and in turn mingled the obscure with the true:

Equal in age, and both outstanding in verse,

Both clad in the skins of a shaggy bear:

Celadon a hunter, Myrtilus a fowler.

Then Celadon first thus began of ancient loves.

CELA. Daphnis was outstanding in beauty, and in green youth:

Daphnis, sprung from a hunter, whom his mother Sirmia

Had brought forth by birth, by the waves of the golden Meuse.

But then in the Euganean hills, around the humid

Streams of the Medoacus, he gave his leisure to the charming Muses.

Here, as he was catching the breezes and lying on the bank,

Leuce, most beautiful inhabitant of the deep groves

(As she by chance was making her way home, weary from the hunt),

Had seen him, and had caught fire in all her bones.

Even her, burdened with the spoils of woodland prey,

The handsome Daphnis looked back at with a desirous eye:

And without delay, he joined himself to the Nymph in the secret shade,

And of his own accord gave hope and faith, and consoled the lover.

Happy both, if these joys had been granted to you

As your own by the steadfast will of the fates.

To the gods it seemed otherwise: Daphnis is forced

To seek foreign lands, and to visit unknown cities.

He indeed was cherishing in his heart the vain hope of return:

But scarcely had he left the cold Alps behind his back,

When, weary, and relieving the heat on the bank and in the river,

Far from his sweet homeland, and the embrace of his people,

An immense torrent overwhelmed him with foaming waves.

But trembling Leuce, and ignorant that he was consumed by death,

While the boy in the woods, and unburied on the bare sand,

Lies cast out by the waves, a miserable corpse,

Unhappy, she wandered alone, and counting the hours

long since slipped away, she called out for you, Daphnis,

late in the evening, for you when day returned, for you all through the night.

At last, overcome by madness and cruel grief,

impious, while she does not know him snatched away by a cruel death,

she attempts to bind the absent one's mind with a magic spell,

and unbinds her hair, and ungirds her tunic,

and honoring the altars with flames, on a serene night,

she addresses her like-minded sister with such a voice:

"Take up the urn, sister, and scatter living waters

around the burning altars, and do not turn your eyes back:

it is my intention to try Haemonian arts (for what

have we achieved with tears?), while the dewy Moon courses

above the earth with her snow-white chariot, and the golden Sun below.

Scatter sulphurs for me, scatter dark blue smoke:

The fluid moisture of sulphur is born in the lap of the earth,

and it guards the causes and origins of things:

this same moisture also aids the herbs touched by magic fumigations,

and entwines the blind fires by which he is burned.

Scatter sulphurs for me, scatter dark blue smoke:

Avenging Furies, whose divine power keeps watch

over wicked crimes, and adds terror to fearful minds,

and all you gods and spirits whom this circumambient air

contains, hear these prayers: Daphnis, departing,

took away my joys, and my reputation, and my snow-white modesty.

You, punish him in turn with an avenging penalty,

and send upon him longing, and tears, and the love of death,

and aimless wanderings, and long griefs.

Scatter sulphurs for me, scatter dark blue smoke.

Just as a dog, when with the consuming heat of the summer star

Turns to madness, a thirst driven through all its marrow

Goads the terrified beast, and is quenched by no draught:

Thus let the God, avenger of lovers, drive Daphnis into furies:

Thus let the avenging God drive Daphnis, and burn him utterly,

And may he not be able to quench the fierce fires of his breast,

Though he drink up the Ocean and all the rivers.

Scatter sulfur for me, scatter cerulean smoke.

This laurel, which rises next to the old myrtle

By the water, and covers the green banks with its leafy top,

This laurel beautiful Daphnis once loved,

And tended this one more than all other trees:

Come, cut this down with its branches, and leaves, and bark, and its very

Trunk, with a sickle, and having cut it with a brazen sickle

Strew it on the ground, trampling it, and say: May Daphnis's mind feel these,

May Daphnis's impious mind feel these hidden blows.

Scatter sulfur for me, scatter cerulean smoke.

Cease, sister, to go too far, you do not know the treacherous

Will of the spirits: come now, sit beneath this altar.

And while you sit, smear your face with the soot of black

Frankincense, tomorrow you will be cleansed by the warm waters of Aponus.

Scatter sulfur for me, scatter cerulean smoke.

Do you see how that he-goat flies through the ethereal breezes?

Black is the goat's hide, black its horns, black its eyes,

That goat will carry ungrateful Daphnis through the void.

Scatter sulfur for me, scatter cerulean smoke.

Now he swims through the blackening clouds between earth and sky,

Ho, Daphnis! But what is this noise in the breeze? They approach,

Daphnis is here: I recognize the screech, I recognize the hisses,

And the dire barking of dogs, and the groaning of wolves.

Scatter sulfur for me, scatter cerulean smoke.

Alas, what shall I do? Lo, a shade fouled with sedge, without garments,

I see the tearful phantom of dead Daphnis.

Now, now, Daphnis, it grieves me: now with all my mind I repent

of what I have done: I call to witness Elysium, and the blessed seats,

which you inhabit: I shall leave the earth, and to the lowest Manes

I shall follow you: go happily, O image, and bear these things to his ashes.

Cease now, O sulfurs, from your blue smoke.

Celadon had finished; then, sad, with welling tears,

Myrtilus in turn replied these things with eloquent mouth:

MYRT. We too, Daphnis, weep for your passing, your sad fate,

and we consecrate an empty tomb to you

in our native mountains; with me the Naiads mourn your death,

and Cynthius mourning with troubled waters,

and Acis, known to fowlers, known to hunters,

and the morning birds echo the laments.

Hide your light-bearing face in the clouds, O Sun, hide it,

I used to say, flee the rivers, Daphnis, avoid the wandering streams:

often I have seen ships broken by the waves, and dead

bodies along with planks, and sailors weeping on the shore.

Hide your light-bearing face in the clouds, O Sun, hide it.

These woods, Daphnis, these springs, these fields you used to inhabit

with us, while the flower of tender youth was growing:

thus you used to deceive the birds with me with snares, and with feigned

songs: happy, if you had scorned the lofty halls

of the powerful. But not for everyone is love the same.

Hide your light-bearing face in the clouds, O Sun, hide it.

Many hardships too, and storms of circumstance,

and the various frauds of men, and colds and heats

we have endured: father Apennine is a witness, and huge

Larius, and the sea that looks forth on the Zephyrs and the Austers,

And peaks never widowed of snows even up to the very

solstice: now near the extreme end of labors

you desert me, and with me your old companions, your care,

experience a bitter life, their companion lost.

Hide, O Sun, your light-bearing face in clouds, hide it.

O would that I could become, with changed body,

your flower, O Hyacinthus, and bring back the accustomed laments

among the pale violets and soft privet:

thus, a herald of rosy spring, every year beneath the risen

stars of Taurus, and the star of Atlantean Maia,

I would mourn the death of Daphnis on the green turf.

Hide, O Sun, your light-bearing face in clouds, hide it.

As much as I can, with groans and tears all the surrounding

groves I fill, dear boy, whether Hesperus draws dark shadows

over the earth, or whether Lucifer, going before in the high heaven,

summons Aurora from her natal waves.

Hide, O Sun, your light-bearing face in clouds, hide it.

Daphnis, your praises will always remain, and the monuments

of your learned genius, nor will any age refute them.

O be mindful, and from some part of the serene sky

look upon us, once driven with you by so many misfortunes.

Now rest is won for you, and you frequent the blessed councils

of the gods above, and you soothe the stars with sweet song.

There you will joyfully receive your coming friend,

stripped of the bonds of the body and its dark prison:

and together he will marvel at the vast orbs of the stars.

O what embraces, O what joys of the mind then,

joys unfailing through perpetual ages.

Reveal, O Sun, your light-bearing face from the clouds, reveal it.

These things they recently beneath the leisurely shade, O Bolgangus,