BION.

The wail of Moschus on the mountains crying

The Muses heard, and loved it long ago;

They heard the hollows of the hills replying,

They heard the weeping water's overflow;

They winged the sacred strain — the song undying,

The song that all about the world must go,—

When poets for a poet dead are sighing,

The minstrels for a minstrel friend laid low.

And dirge to dirge that answers, and the weeping

For Adonais by the summer sea,

The plaints for Lycidas, and Thyrsis ( sleeping

Far from “the forest ground called Thessaly” ),—

These hold thy memory, Bion, in their keeping,

And are but echoes of the moan for thee.