Ask not the numbers of my growing store;
Who knows how many, knows he has no more:
Nor will I praise my cattle, trust not me,
But judge yourself, and pass your own decree:
Behold their swelling dugs, the sweepy weight
Of ewes, that sink beneath the milky freight;
In the warm folds their tender lambkins lie,
Apart from kids, that call with human cry.
New milk in nut-brown bowls is duly served
For daily drink; the rest for cheese reserved.
Nor are these household dainties all my store:
The fields and forests will afford us more;
The deer, the hare, the goat, the savage boar.
All sorts of venison; and of birds the best;
A pair of turtles taken from the nest.
I walk’d the mountains, and two cubs I found,
(Whose dam had left them on the naked ground,)
So like, that no distinction could be seen:
So pretty, they were presents for a queen;
And so they shall: I took them both away,
And keep to be companions of your play.
“ ‘Oh raise, fair nymph, your beauteous face above
The waves, nor scorn my presents and my love.
Come, Galatea, come, and view my face;
I late beheld it in the watery glass,
And found it lovelier than I fear’d it was.
Survey my towering stature, and my size:
Not Jove, the Jove you dream that rules the skies,
Bears such a bulk, or is so largely spread:
My locks (the plenteous harvest of my head)
Hang o’er my manly face, and dangling down,
As with a shady grove, my shoulders crown:
Nor think, because my limbs and body bear
A thickset underwood of bristling hair,
My shape deform’d; what fouler sight can be
Than the bald branches of a leafless tree?
Foul is the steed without a flowing mane,
And birds without their feathers and their train.
Wool decks the sheep, and man receives a grace
From bushy limbs, and from a bearded face:
My forehead with a single eye is fill’d,
Round as a ball, and ample as a shield;
The glorious lamp of heaven, the radiant sun,
Is nature’s eye, and she’s content with one:
Add, that my father sways your seas, and I,
Like you, am of the watery family;
I make you his, in making you my own;
You I adore, and kneel to you alone.
Jove, with his fabled thunder, I despise,
And only fear the lightning of your eyes.
Frown not, fair nymph; yet I could bear to be
Disdain’d, if others were disdain’d with me
But to repulse the cyclop, and prefer
The love of Acis, heavens! I cannot bear.
But let the stripling please himself; nay, more,
Please you, though that’s the thing I most abhor;
The boy shall find, if e’er we cope in fight,’
These giant limbs endued with giant might.
His living bowels, from his belly torn,
And scatter’d limbs, shall on the flood be borne;
Thy flood, ungrateful nymph, and fate shall find
That way for thee and Acis to be join’d:
For, oh! I burn with love, and thy disdain
Augments at once my passion and my pain.
Translated Aetna flames within my heart,
And thou, inhuman, wilt not ease my smart.’
“Lamenting thus in vain, he rose, and strode
With furious paces to the neighbouring wood:
Restless his feet, distracted was his walk,
Mad were his motions, and confused his talk:
Mad as the vanquish’d bull when forced to yield
His lovely mistress, and forsake the field.
“Thus far unseen I saw; when fatal chance
His looks directing, with a sudden glance,
Acis and I were to his sight betray’d,
Where, naught suspecting, we securely play’d,
From his wide mouth a bellowing cry he cast:
‘I see, I see; but this shall be your last.’
A roar so loud made jEtna to rebound;
And all the cyclop labour’d in the sound.
Affrighted with his monstrous voice, I fled,
And in the neighbouring ocean plunged my head:
Poor Acis turn’d his back, and, ‘Help,’ he cried,
‘Help, Galatea; help, my parent gods,
And take me, dying, to your deep abodes.’
The cyclop follow’d, but he sent before
A rib, which from the living rock he tore:
Though but an angle reach’d him of the stone,
The mighty fragment was enough alone
To crush all Acis. ’Twas too late to save;
But what the fntes allow’d to give, I gave;
That Acis to his lineage should return,
And roll among the river gods his urn.
Straight issued from the stone a stream of blood,
Which lost the purple, mingling with the flood:
Then like a double torrent it appear’d,
The torrent too, in little space was clear’d
The stone was cleft and through the yawning chink
New reeds arose on the new river’s brink.
The rock, from out its hollow womb, disclosed
A sound like water in its course opposed,
When, wondrous to behold! full in the flood,
Up starts a youth, and navel-high he stood;
Horns from his temples rise, and either horn
Thick wreaths of reeds (his native growth) adorn.
Were not his stature taller than before,
His bulk augmented, and his beauty more,
His colour blue, for Acis he might pass,
And Acis changed into a stream he was:
But mine no more; he rolls along the plains
With rapid motion, and his name retains.”
Story of Glaucus and Scylla
Glaucus, a fisherman of Boeotia, is transformed into a sea god, and becomes enamoured of a nereid, named Scylla, who rejects his suit.
Here ceased the nymph; the fair assembly broke,
The sea-green nereids to the waves betook;
While Scylla, fearful of the wide-spread main,
Swift to the safer shore returns again;
There o’er the sandy margin, unarray’d,
With printless footsteps, flies the bounding maid;
Or in some winding creek’s secure retreat
She bathes her weary limbs, and shuns the noonday heat.
Her, Glaucus saw, as o’er the deep he rode,
New to the seas, and late received a god.
He saw, and languish’d for the virgin’s love.
With many an artful blandishment he strove
Her flight to hinder, and her fears remove.
The more he sues, the more she wings her flight.
And nimbly gains a neighbouring mountain’s height
Steep shelving to the margin of the flood,
A neighbouring mountain bare and woodless stood.
Here, by the place secured, her steps she stay’d,
And, trembling still, her lover’s form survey’d.
His shape, his hue, her troubled sense appal,
And drooping locks, that o’er his shoulders fall;
She sees his face divine, and manly brow,
End in a fish’s writhy tail below;
She sees, and doubts within her anxious mind,
Whether he comes of god or monster kind.
This Glaucus soon perceived, and, “Oh, forbear!”
His hand supporting on a rock
