Me from the Learnèd Maids (Hortalus!) ever seclude,Nor can avail sweet births of the Muses thou to deliverThought o' my mind; (so much floats it on flooding of ills:For that the Lethe-wave upsurging of late from abysses,Lavèd my brother's foot, paling with pallor of death,He whom the Trojan soil, Rhoetean shore underlying, Buries for ever and aye, forcibly snatched from our sight.I can address; no more shall I hear thee tell of thy doings,Say, shall I never again, brother all liefer than life,Sight thee henceforth? But I will surely love thee for everEver what songs I sing saddened shall be by thy death;Such as the Daulian bird 'neath gloom of shadowy frondageWarbles, of Itys lost ever bemoaning the lot.)Yet amid grief so great to thee, my Hortalus, send IThese strains sung to a mode borrowed from Battiades;Lest shouldest weet of me thy words, to wandering wind-gustsVainly committed, perchance forth of my memory flowed— As did that apple sent for a furtive giftie by wooer,In the chaste breast of the Maid hidden a-sudden out-sprang;For did the hapless forget when in loose-girt garment it lurkèd,Forth would it leap as she rose, scared by her mother's approach,And while coursing headlong, it rolls far out of her keeping,O'er the triste virgin's brow flushes the conscious blush.
(LOQUITUR) BERENICE'S LOCK.
He who every light of the sky world's vastness inspected,He who mastered in mind risings and settings of stars,How of the fast rising sun obscured be the fiery splendours,How at the seasons assured vanish the planets from view,How Diana to lurk thief-like 'neath Latmian stone-fields,Summoned by sweetness of Love, comes from her aëry gyre;That same Cónon espied among lights Celestial shiningMe, Berenice's Hair, which, from her glorious head, Fulgent in brightness afar, to many a host of the GodheadsStretching her soft smooth arms she vowed to devoutly bestow,What time strengthened by joy of new-made wedlock the monarch