Your flocks' good health; then each, discreetly mute,
His love's!--Nay, scream her name! Yon madcap crowd
Screams louder, to its wry-necked Phrygian flute.

On with the sport! Night's chariot appears:
The stars, her children, follow through the sky:
Dark Sleep comes soon, on wings no mortal hears,
With strange, dim dreams that know not where they fly.




ELEGY THE SECOND

A BIRTHDAY WISH


Burn incense now! and round our altars fair
With cheerful vows or sacred silence stand!
To-day Cerinthus' birth our rites declare,
With perfumes from the blest Arabian land.

Let his own Genius to our festal haste,
While fresh-blown flowers his heavenly tresses twine
And balm-anointed brows; so let him taste
Our offered loaf and sweet, unstinted wine!

To thee Cerinthus may his favoring care
Grant every wish! O claim some priceless meed!
Ask a fond wife thy life-long bliss to share--