Classic Poem

Mourn, and your grief ye Groves in soft sighs breath,
Ye Rivers drop in tears, for Bions death:
His losse ye Plants lament, ye Woods bewaile,
Ye Flowers your odours with your griefs exhale;
In purple mourn, Anemony and Rose;
Breath Hyacinth that sigh, and more, which grows
Upon thy cheek; the sweet voic'd Singers gone:
Begin Sicilian Muse, begin your mone.
Ye Nightingales that mourn on thickest boughs,
Tell gentle Arethusa's stream which flows
Through Sicily, Bion the Shepherds dead,
And with him Poetry and Musick fled.
Begin Sicilian &c.
Strimonian Swans vent from your mournful throats
(Gliding upon the waves) such dying notes
As heretofore in you the Poet sung;
Tell the Oeagrian , tell the Thracian young
Virgins, the Dorick Orpheus hence is gone;
Begin Sicilian Muse, begin your mone.
He never more shall pipe to his lov'd flock,
Laid underneath some solitary Oak,
But songs of Lethe now, by Pluto taught;
The Hils are dumb; the Heifers that late sought
The Bull lament, and let their meat alone.
Begin Sicilian Muse, begin your mone.
Apollo wept thy death, thy silenc'd reeds
Satyrs, Priapusses in mourning weeds
And Fawns bewail: 'mongst woods the Nymphs that dwell
In fountains weep, whose tears to fountains swell;
Eccho 'mongst rocks her silence doth deplore,
Nor words (now thine are stopt) will follow more;
Flowers fade; abortive fruit falls from the trees;
The Ews no Milk, no Honey give the Bees,
But wither'd combs; the sweetness being gone
Of thy lov'd voice, Honey it self hath none.
Begin Sicilian Muse, begin your mone.
So Dolphin never wail'd upon the strand;
So never Nightingale on craggy land;
So never Swallow on the mountains mourn'd;
Nor Halcyons sorrows Ceyx so return'd.
Begin Sicilian, &c.
So Cerylus on blew waves never sung;
In Eastern vales, the bird from Memnon sprung
Aurora's son so mourn'd not, hovering o're
His Sepulcher, as Bion they deplore.
Begin Sicilian, &c.
Swallows and Nightingales, whom he to please
Once taught to sing, now sitting on high trees
Sing forth their grief in parts, the rest reply,
And Doves with murmuring keep them company.
Begin Sicilian, &c.
Who now can use thy Pipe, or dare betray
Such boldness to thy Reeds his lips to lay?
They yet are by thy lips and breath inspir'd,
And Eccho thence hath harmony acquir'd;
Pan keeps thy Pipe, but will its use decline,
Fearing to prove his own skill short of thine.
Begin Sicilian, &c.
Thee Galathea wails, whom heretofore
Thy songs delighted sitting on the shore:
The Cyclop sung not so; She through the Sea
(Though him she fled) darted kind looks at Thee;
And now in desert sands she sits, the deep
Forsaking quite, and doth thy Oxen keep.
Begin Sicilian, &c.
With thee (lov'd Swain) dy all the Muses joyes,
The kisses of young Maids and amorous Boyes;
The Cupids weep about thy Sepulcher;
Thee Venus did beyond the kisse prefer
Which from Adonis dying she receiv'd.
Thou hast new cause great River to be griev'd,
New sorrow Melus: Homer first by death
Was seiz'd ( Calliopes harmonious breath)
Then thy fair Son thy troubled waves deplor'd,
And over all the Sea their current roar'd;
Thou now must languish for another Son:
Both Fountains lov'd; the Pegasaean One,
The other courted Arethusa's spring:
One did of Tyndarus fair Daughter sing,
Thetis great Son, and Menelaus wrong;
Nor wars nor tears, Pan was the others song,
And Shepherds: As he sung he us'd to feed
His flock, milk Cows, or carve an oaten reed,
Taught the Youth courtship, in his bosom love
He nurs'd, and Venus onely did approve.
Begin Sicilian, &c.
Thy death each City every Town resents;
Above her Hesiod Ascra thee laments;
Lesse Pindar by Boetian woods is lov'd;
Lesse with Alcaeus fate was Lesbus mov'd;
Their Poets losse lesse griev'd the Ceian town;
Parus lesse love t' Archilochus hath shown;
Thy verse 'bove Sapphos Mytilene admires;
All whom th'indulgence of the Muses fires
With pastoral heat, bewail thy sad decease;
The Samian glory mourns, Sicelides ;
Amongst Cydonians (whose late mirth their pride)
Licidas weeps; his grief by Hales tide
Philetas , 'mongst Triopians , doth diffuse,
Theocritus 'mongst those of Syracuse ;
And with Ausonian grief my verse is fraught;
Such thy own Scholers by thy self were taught,
Who as thy heirs claim Dorik poesie;
Thy wealth to others, verse thou left'st to me.
Begin Sicilian, &c.
Alas though time the garden Mallows kill,
The verdant Smallage and the flowry Dill,
Yet these revive, and new the next year rise;
But Man, though ne're so great, so strong, so wise,
Once dead, inclos'd in hollow earth must keep
A long, obscure, inexcitable sleep.
And thou art thus laid silent in the ground;
For thy sweet voice we onely hear the sound
Of the hoarse Frogs unintermitted grone.
Begin Sicilian Muse, begin your mone.
Cam'st thou by Poyson Bion to thy death?
Scapt that the Antidote of thy sweet breath?
What cruel Man to thee could poyson bear?
Against thy musick sure he stopt his ear.
Begin Sicilian, &c.
But a just vengeance is reserv'd for all;
Mean time, with others, I bewail thy fall,
Might I like Orpheus view the states below,
And like Alcides , or Ulisses go
To Pluto's court, I would enquire if there
To him thou singst, and what thou singst would hear;
Court Her with some Sicilian past'ral strain,
Who sporting on Sicilian Ætna's plain
Sung Dorik laies; thine may successful be,
And as once Orpheus brought Euridice
Thee back perhaps they to these hills may bring,
Had I such skill to Pluto I would sing.