ly
graceful ("Love in her Eyes sits playing and sheds delicious Death"). The
melodious and sensuous dialogue is continued by Galatea, who once more
sings:--

"As when the dove
Laments her love
All on the naked spray;
When he returns
No more she mourns,
But loves the live-long day.
Billing, cooing,
Panting, wooing,
Melting murmurs fill the grove,
Melting murmurs, lasting love."--

Then in a duet, sparkling with the happiness of the lovers ("Happy We"),
closing with chorus to the same words, this pretty picture of ancient
pastoral life among the nymphs and shepherds comes to an end.

In the second part there is another tone both to scene and music. The
opening chorus of alarm ("Wretched Lovers") portends the coming of the
love-sick Cyclops; the mountains bow, the forests shake, the waves run
frightened to the shore as he approaches roaring and calling for "a
hundred reeds of decent growth," that on "such pipe" his capacious mouth
may play the praises of Galatea. The recitative, "I melt, I rage, I
burn," is very characteristic, and leads to the giant's love-song, an
unctuous, catching melody almost too full of humor and grace for the
fierce brute of AEtna:--

"O ruddier than the cherry!
O sweeter than the berry!
O nymph more bright
Than moonshine night,
Like kidlings, blithe and merry.

"Ripe as the melting cluster,
No lily has such lustre.
Yet hard to tame
As raging flame,
And fierce as storms that bluster."

In marked contrast with this declaration follows the plaintive tender
song of Acis ("Love sounds the Alarm"). Galatea appeals to him to trust
the gods, and then the three join in a trio ("The Flocks shall leave the
Mountain"). Enraged at his discomfiture, the giant puts forth his power.
He is no longer the lover piping to Galatea and dissembling his real
nature, but a destructive raging force; and the fragment of mountain
which he tears away buries poor Acis as effectually as AEtna sometimes
does the plains beneath. The catastrophe accomplished, the work closes
with the sad lament of Galatea for her lover ("Must I my Acis still
bemoan?") and the choral consolations of the shepherds and their
swains:--

"Galatea, dry thy tears,
Acis now a god appears;
See how he rears him from his bed!
See the wreath that binds his head!
Hail! thou gentle murmuring stream;
Shepherds' pleasure, Muses' theme;
Through the plains still joy to rove