be choked with rushy mire, your ewes with young by no strange fodder will be tried, nor hurt through taint contagious of a neighbouring flock. Happy old man, who 'mid familiar streams and hallowed springs, will court the cooling shade! Here, as of old, your neighbour's bordering hedge, that feasts with willow-flower the Hybla bees, shall oft with gentle murmur lull to sleep, while the leaf-dresser beneath some tall rock uplifts his song, nor cease their cooings hoarse the wood-pigeons that are your heart's delight, nor doves their moaning in the elm-tree top. TITYRUS Sooner shall light stags, therefore, feed in air, the seas their fish leave naked on the strand, germans and Parthians shift their natural bounds, and these the Arar , those the Tigris drink, than from my heart his face and memory fade. MELIBOEUS But we far hence, to burning Libya some, some to the Scythian steppes, or thy swift flood, cretan Oaxes, now must wend our way, or Britain , from the whole world sundered far. Ah! shall I ever in aftertime behold my native bounds—see many a harvest hence with ravished eyes the lowly turf-roofed cot where I was king? These fallows, trimmed so fair, some brutal soldier will possess these fields an alien master. Ah! to what a pass has civil discord brought our hapless folk! For such as these, then, were our furrows sown! Now, Meliboeus, graft your pears, now set