ome
of the more famous "songs of tears". The laudatory clegy of Moschus for
his master--we say of Moschus, although Ahrens, in his recension,
includes the lament under 'Incertorum Idyllia' at the end of 'Moschi
Reliquiae'--follows it faithfully. Milton in his great ode of 'Lycidas'
does not depart from the Greek lines; and Shelley, lamenting Keats in
his 'Adonais,' reverts still more closely to the first master, adding
perhaps an element of artificiality one does not find in other
threnodies. The broken and extended form of Tennyson's celebration of
Arthur Hallam takes it out of a comparison with the Greek; but the
monody of 'Thyrsis', Matthew Arnold's commemoration of Clough,
approaches nearer the Greek. Yet no other lament has the energy and
rapidity of Bion's; the refrain, the insistent repetition of the words
"I wail for Adonis",--"Alas for Cypris!" full of pathos and unspoken
irrepressible woe, is used only by his pupil Moschus, though hinted at
by Milton.

The peculiar rhythm, the passion and delicate finish of the song, have
attracted a number of translators, among whose versions Mrs. Browning's
'The Lament for Adonis' is considered the best. The subjoined version in
the Spenserian stanza, by Anna C. Brackett, follows its model closely in
its directness and fervor of expression, and has moreover in itself
genuine poetic merit. The translation of a fragment of 'Hesperos' is
that of J.A. Symonds. Bion's fluent and elegant versification invites
study, and his few idyls and fragments have at various times been turned
into English by Fawkes (to be found in Chalmers's 'Works of English
Poets'), Polwhele, Banks, Chapman, and others.

THRENODY

I weep for Adonais--he is dead!
Dead Adonais lies, and mourning all,
The Loves wail round his fair, low-lying head.
O Cypris, sleep no more! Let from thee fall
Thy purple vestments--hear'st thou not the call?
Let fall thy purple vestments! Lay them by!
Ah, smite thy bosom, and in sable pall
Send shivering through the air thy bitter cry
For Adonais dead, while all the Loves reply.

I weep for Adonais--weep the Loves.
Low on the mountains beauteous lies he there,
And languid through his lips the faint breath moves,
And black the blood creeps o'er his smooth thigh, where
The boar's white tooth the whiter flesh must tear.
Glazed grow his eyes beneath the eye