roast beans for me, in the embers. And elbow-deep shall the flowery
bed be thickly strewn, with fragrant leaves and with asphodel, and
with curled parsley; and softly will I drink, toasting Ageanax with
lips clinging fast to the cup, and draining it even to the lees.

Two shepherds shall be my flute-players, one from Acharnae, one from
Lycope, and hard by Tityrus shall sing, how the herdsman Daphnis once
loved a strange maiden, and how on the hill he wandered, and how the
oak trees sang his dirge--the oaks that grow by the banks of the
river Himeras--while he was wasting like any snow under high Haemus,
or Athos, or Rhodope, or Caucasus at the world's end.

And he shall sing how, once upon a time, the great chest prisoned the
living goatherd, by his lord's infatuate and evil will, and how the
blunt-faced bees, as they came up from the meadow to the fragrant
cedar chest, fed him with food of tender flowers, because the Muse
still dropped sweet nectar on his lips. {42}

O blessed Comatas, surely these joyful things befell thee, and thou
wast enclosed within the chest, and feeding on the honeycomb through
the springtime didst thou serve out thy bondage. Ah, would that in
my days thou hadst been numbered with the living, how gladly on the
hills would I have herded thy pretty she-goats, and listened to thy
voice, whilst thou, under oaks or pine trees lying, didst sweetly
sing, divine Comatas!

When he had chanted thus much he ceased, and I followed after him
again, with some such words as these:-

'Dear Lycidas, many another song the Nymphs have taught me also, as I