So then was DAPHNIS glad, and lept and clapt his hands; And danced as doth a fawn, when by the dam he stands. MENALCAS grieved, the thing his mind did much dismay: And sad as Bride he was, upon the marriage day.
Since then among the Shepherds, DAPHNIS chief was had! And took a Nymph to wife when he was but a lad.
THEOCRITUS wrote this Idillion to NICIAS a learned Physician: wherein he sheweth--by the example of POLYPHEMUS a giant in Sicily, of the race of the CYCLOPS, who loved the Water Nymph GALATEA--that there is no medicine so sovereign against Love as is Poetry. Of whose Love Song, as this Idillion, is termed CYCLOPS; so he was called CYCLOPS, because he had but one eye, that stood like a circle in the midst of his forehead.
O Nicias, there is no other remedy for Love, With ointing, or with sprinkling on, that ever I could prove, Beside the Muses nine! This pleasant medicine of the mind Grows among men; and seems but light, yet very hard to find: As well I wote you know; who are in physic such a Leech, And of the Muses so beloved. The cause of this my speech A CYCLOPS is, who lived here with us right wealthily; That ancient POLYPHEM, when first he loved GALATE (When, with a bristled beard, his chin and cheeks first clothed were): He loved her not with roses, apples, or with curlèd hair; But with the Furies' rage. All other things he little plied. Full often to their fold, from pastures green, without a guide, His sheep returnèd home: when all the while he singing lay In honour of his Love, and on the shore consumed away From morning until night; sick of the wound, fast by the heart, Which mighty VENUS gave, and in his liver stuck the dart. For which, this remedy he found, that sitting oftentimes Upon a rock and looking on the sea, he sang these rhymes:
"O GALATEA fair, why dost thou shun thy lover true? More tender than a lamb, more white than cheese when it is new, More wanton than a calf, more sharp than grapes unripe, I find. You use to come when pleasant sleep, my senses all do bind: But you are gone again when pleasant sleep doth leave mine eye; And as a sheep you run, that on the plain a wolf doth spy.
"I then began to love thee, GALATE, when first of all You, with my mother, came to gather leaves of crowtoe [_hyacinth_] small Upon our hill; when I, as Usher, squired you all the way. Nor when I saw thee first, nor afterwards, nor at this day, Since then could I refrain: but you, by Jove! nought set thereby!