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 SOW 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 parched 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 thy golden