Thrice spat she on her robe, and, muttering low,
    Scanned me, with half-shut eyes, from top to toe: 
    Brought all her woman’s witcheries into play,
    Still smiling in a set sarcastic way,
    Till my blood boiled, my visage crimson grew
    With indignation, as a rose with dew: 
    And so she left me, inly to repine
    That such as she could flout such charms as mine.

      O shepherds, tell me true!  Am I not fair? 
    Am I transformed?  For lately I did wear
    Grace as a garment; and my cheeks, o’er them
    Ran the rich growth like ivy round the stem. 
    Like fern my tresses o’er my temples streamed;
    O’er my dark eyebrows, white my forehead gleamed: 
    My eyes were of Athene’s radiant blue,
    My mouth was milk, its accents honeydew. 
    Then I could sing—­my tones were soft indeed!—­
    To pipe or flute or flageolet or reed: 
    And me did every maid that roams the fell
    Kiss and call fair:  not so this city belle. 
    She scorns the herdsman; knows not how divine
    Bacchus ranged once the valleys with his kine;
    How Cypris, maddened for a herdsman’s sake,
    Deigned upon Phrygia’s mountains to partake
    His cares:  and wooed, and wept, Adonis in the brake. 
    What was Endymion, sweet Selene’s love? 
    A herdsman’s lad.  Yet came she from above,
    Down to green Latmos, by his side to sleep. 
    And did not Rhea for a herdsman weep? 
    Didst not thou, Zeus, become a wandering bird,
    To win the love of one who drove a herd? 
    Selene, Cybele, Cypris, all loved swains: 
    Eunice, loftier-bred, their kiss disdains. 
    Henceforth, by hill or hall, thy love disown,
    Cypris, and sleep the livelong night alone.

IDYLL XXI.

The Fishermen.

ASPHALION, A COMRADE.

    Want quickens wit:  Want’s pupils needs must work,
    O Diophantus:  for the child of toil
    Is grudged his very sleep by carking cares: 
    Or, if he taste the blessedness of night,
    Thought for the morrow soon warns slumber off.

      Two ancient fishers once lay side by side
    On piled-up sea-wrack in their wattled hut,
    Its leafy wall their curtain.  Near them lay
    The weapons of their trade, basket and rod,
    Hooks, weed-encumbered nets, and cords and oars,
    And, propped on rollers, an infirm old boat. 
    Their pillow was a scanty mat, eked out
    With caps and garments:  such the ways and means,
    Such the whole treasury of the fishermen. 
    They knew no luxuries:  owned nor door nor dog;
    Their craft their all, their mistress Poverty: 
    Their only neighbour Ocean, who for aye
    Bound their lorn hut came floating lazily.

      Ere the moon’s chariot was in mid-career,
    The fishers girt them for their customed toil,
    And banished slumber from unwilling eyes,
    And roused their dreamy intellects with speech:—­