THE REAPERS
Milo and Battus
MILO.
But come now, down with the harvest!
Strike up also, I pray, a sweetheart song of the maiden;
Thus will you work more lightly:—I think you used to be tuneful.
BATTUS (sings).
"Sing with me, O Pierian Muses, the lass that is lissome;
For ye make all things fair, whatever ye touch, ye Divine Ones!
"Graceful Bombýcê, they call you a Syrian, scrawny and sunburnt,—
All but me, who alone pronounce you the color of honey.
"Ay, and the violet's dark, and the hyacinth wearing its letters:
None the less, for all that, are they sorted first in the garlands.
"She-goats hunt tor the clover, the wolf goes after the she-goat,
After the plough the crane,—but I've gone raving for you, love!
"Would that mine were as much as Crœsus, they say, was possessed of;
Then should we twain, in gold, be set up before Aphrodite;
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