Greek Texts & Translations

A neatherd, chafing because a city wench disdains him, protests that he is a handsome fellow, and that Gods have been known to make love to country-folk, and calls down upon her the curse of perpetual celibacy. This spirited poem is a monologue, but preserves the mime-form by means of dumb characters, the shepherds of line 19. Stylistic considerations belie the tradition which ascribes it to Theocritus.

20.1 When I would have kissed her sweetly, Eunica fleered at me and flouted me saying, ‘Go with a mischief! What? kiss me miserable clown like thee? I never learned your countrified bussing; my kissing is in the fashion o’ the town. I will not have such as thee to kiss my pretty lips, nay, not in his dreams. Lord, how you look! Lord, how you talk! Lord, how you antic! Your lips are wet and your hands black, and you smell rank. Hold off and begone, or you’ll befoul me!’ Telling this tale she spit thrice in her bosom, and all the while eyed me from top to toe, and mowed at me and leered at me and made much she-play with her pretty looks, and anon did right broadly, scornfully, and disdainfully laugh at me. Trust me, my blood boiled up in a moment, and my face went as red with the anguish of it as the rose with the dewdrops. And so she up and left me, but it rankles in my heart that such a filthy drab should cavil at a well-favoured fellow like me.

20.19 Tell me true, master Shepherds; see you not here a proper man, or hath some power taken and transmewed him? Marry, ‘twas a sweet piece of ivy bloomed ere now on this tree, and a sweet piece of ivy bloomed ere now on this tree, and a sweet piece of beauty put fringe to this lip; the hair o’ these temples lay lush as the parsley; this forehead did shine me white above and these eyebrows black below; these eyes were beamy as the Grey-eyed Lady’s, this mouth trim as a cream-cheese; and the voice which came forth o’ this mouth was even as honeycomb. Sweet also is the music I make, be it o’ the flute or the crossflute. And there’s not a lass in the uplands but says I am good to look to, not one but kisses me, neither; but your city pieces, look you, never a kiss got I o’ them, but they ran me by and would not listen because I herd cows.

20.33 Doth not the beautiful Dionysus ride a bull i' the dells? Wist she not Cypris ran mad after a neatherd and tended cattle i' the Phrybian hills? And the same Cypris, loved she not Adonis in the woods and in the woods bewailed him? And what of Endymion? Was it not a neatherd the Lday Moon loved when he was at his labour, and came down from Olympus into Latmos vale to bow herself over him of her choice? Thou too, great Rhea, dost bewail a neatherd; and didst not e’en thou, thou Son of Cronus, become a wandering bird for the sake of a lad o’ the kine? Nay, ‘twas left to mistress Eunica to deny a neatherd her love, this piece that is a greater than Cybelè and Cypris and the Lady Moon! Wherefore I beseech thee, sweet Cypris, the same may never more whether in upland or in lowland come at the love of her leman, but may lie lone and sleep sole for the rest of her days.