Bion of Smyrna Poems

I weep for Adonais--he is dead!
Dead Adonais lies, and mourning all,
The Loves wail round his fair, low-lying head.
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I to the sandy shore and seaward slope
Will go, and try with murmured song to bend
The cruel Galatea. My sweet hope
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Bright Cypris! Goddess ever meek and mild,
Of mightiest Zeus and loveliest sea-nymph child,
Why with Immortals and our mortal kind
Art thou so wroth? What stung thy gentle mind
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MYRSON. LYCIDAS.
MYRSON.
Will you, my Lycidas, now sing for me
A soothing sweet Sicilian melody-
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CLEODAMUS. MYRSON.
CLEODAMUS.
What sweet for you has Summer or the Spring,
What joy does Autumn or the Winter bring?
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Hunting the birds within a bosky grove,
A birder, yet a boy, saw winged Love
Perched on a box-tree branch; rejoicing saw
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Happy is love or friendship when returned-
The lovers whose pure flames have equal burned.
Happy was Theseus, e'en in Tartarus,
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I and the Loves Adonis dead deplore;
The beautiful Adonis is indeed
Departed, parted from us. Sleep no more
In purple, Cypris, but in watchet weed,
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If sweet my songs, or these sufficient be
Which I have sung to give renown to me,
I know not; but it misbeseems to strain
At things we have not learned, and toil in vain.
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Yourself to artists always to betake,
And on yourself in nothing to rely
Is misbeseeming. Friend! Your own pipe make-
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