Chloris Kisses are empty joys and soon are o’er.
Daphnis A kiss betwixt the lips is something more.
Chloris I wipe my mouth and where’s your kissing then?
Daphnis I swear you wipe it to be kissed again.
Chloris Go tend your heard and kiss your cows at home;
I am a maid, and in my beauty’s bloom.
Daphnis ‘Tis well remembered, do not waste your time;
But wisely use it e’re you pass your prime.
Chloris Blown roses hold their sweetness to their last,
And raisins keep their luscious native taste.
(Idyll27, 1–14 translated by John Dryden)This style of argument or exchange is called the ‘amoebean’ from the Greek word to
answer. At the end of the poem Chloris has yielded. She addresses Diana, the goddess
of chastity:
Forgive thy handmaid, huntress of the wood!
I see there’s no resisting flesh and blood!
(112–113)In Idyll1, Theocritus’ shepherd Thyrsis sings a lament for the mythical herdsman
Daphnis, who is apparently dying for love, in lines that have been famously echoed
in subsequent pastoral elegies, such as John Milton’s Lycidas.
Where were you Nymphs, when Daphnis came to grief?
What distant valley or mountain gave you delight?
You could not be found beside Anapus, the great river,
Nor by the water of Acis, nor on Etna’s height.Muses, sing for a herdsman, sing me your song....Bear violets now, you bramble bushes and thorntrees,
Let the world turn cross-natured, since Daphnis dies.
Let the prickly juniper bloom with soft narcissus,
The pine be weighed with pears. Let the stag hunt the hounds,
Let the nightingale attend to the screech-owl’s cries.Goodbye to the herdsman, Muses, goodbye to the song.
(Idyll1, 66–70; 132–137 translated by Robert Wells)LITERATURE 183