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III.—THE SERENADE
The poet appears to personate a young goatherd, who after five lines dedicatory to a friend whom he calls Tityrus, serenades his mistress Amaryllis. The poem is a monologue, but, like II, preserves the dialogue-form of the mime by means of a dumb character. The appeal to Amaryllis may be regarded as consisting of three parts each ending with the offer of a gift—apples, garland, goat—and a fourth part containing a love-song of four stanzas. The reciter would doubtless make a slight pause to mark the rejection of each gift and the failure of the song before the renewal of the cry of despair.
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