long its happy country tone;
Lost it too soon, and learned a stormy note
Of men contention tost, of men who groan,
Which tasked thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat--
It failed, and thou wast mute!

What hadst _thou_ to make in cities, and what could Ptolemies and Princes
give thee better than the goat-milk cheese and the Ptelean wine? Thy
Muses were meant to be the delight of peaceful men, not of tyrants and
wealthy merchants, to whom they vainly went on a begging errand. 'Who
will open his door and gladly receive our Muses within his house, who is
there that will not send them back again without a gift? And they with
naked feet and looks askance come homewards, and sorely they upbraid me
when they have gone on a vain journey, and listless again in the bottom
of their empty coffer they dwell with heads bowed over their chilly
knees, where is their drear abode, when portionless they return.' How
far happier was the prisoned goat-herd, Comatas, in the fragrant cedar
chest where the blunt-faced bees from the meadow fed him with food of
tender flowers, because still the Muse dropped sweet nectar on his lips!

Thou didst leave the neat-herds and the kine, and the oaks of Himera,
the galingale hummed over by the bees, and the pine that dropped her
cones, and Amaryllis in her cave, and Bombyca with her feet of carven
ivory. Thou soughtest the City, and strife with other singers, and the
learned write still on thy quarrels with Apollonius and Callimachus,
and Antagoras of Rhodes. So ancient are the hatreds of poets, envy,
jealousy, and all unkindness.

Not to the wits of Courts couldst thou teach thy rural song, though all
these centuries, more than two thousand years, they have laboured to
vie with thee. There has come no new pastoral poet, though Virgil copied
thee, and Pope, and Phillips, and all the buckram band of the teacup
time; and all the modish swains of France have sung against thee, as the
_son challenged Athene_. They never knew the shepherd's life, the long'
winter nights on dried heather by the fire, the long summer days, when
over the dry grass all is quiet, and only the insects hum, and the
shrunken burn whispers a silver tune. Swains in high-heeled shoon, and
lace, shepherdesses in rouge and diamonds, the world is weary of all
concerning them, save their images in porcelain, effigies how unlike the
golden figures, dedicate to Aphrodite, of Bombyca and Battus. Somewhat,
Theocritus, thou hast to