THE DEAD OX.

GEORG. IV.

LO! smoking in the stubborn plough, the ox
Falls, from his lip foam gushing crimson-stained,
And sobs his life out. Sad of face the ploughman
Moves, disentangling from his comrade's corpse
The lone survivor: and its work half-done,
Abandoned in the furrow stands the plough.
Not shadiest forest-depths, not softest lawns,
May move him now: not river amber-pure,
That volumes o'er the cragstones to the plain.
Powerless the broad sides, glazed the rayless eye,
And low and lower sinks the ponderous neck.
What thank hath he for all the toil he toiled,
The heavy-clodded land in man's behoof

Upturning? Yet the grape of Italy,

The stored-up feast hath wrought no harm to him: Green leaf and taintless grass are all their fare; The clear rill or the travel-freshen'd stream

Their cup: nor one care mars their honest sleep.

FROM THEOCRITUS.

IDYLL. VII.

SCARCE midway were we yet, nor yet descried

The stone that hides what once was Brasidas:

When there drew near a wayfarer from Crete,
Young Lycidas, the Muses' votary.

The horned herd was his care: a glance might tell

So much for every inch a herdsman he.
Slung o'er his shoulder was a ruddy hide
Torn from a he-goat, shaggy, tangle-haired,
That reeked of rennet yet: a broad belt clasped
A patched cloak round his breast, and for a staff
A gnarled wild-olive bough his right hand bore.
Soon with a quiet smile he spoke his eye
Twinkled, and laughter sat upon his lip:

"And whither ploddest thou thy weary way

Beneath the noontide sun, Simichides?

For now the lizard sleeps upon the wall,

The crested lark hath closed his wandering wing.

Speed'st thou, a bidd'n guest, to some reveller's

board?

Or townwards, to the treading of the grape?

For lo recoiling from thy hurrying feet

The pavement-stones ring out right merrily."

SPEECH OF AJAX.

SOPH. Aj. 645.

ALL strangest things the multitudinous years

Bring forth, and shadow from us all we know. Falter alike great oath and steeled resolve;

And none shall say of aught, 'This may not be.' Lo! I myself, but yesterday so strong,

As new-dipt steel am weak and all unsexed

By yonder woman: yea I mourn for them,

Widow and orphan, left amid their foes.
But I will journey seaward-where the shore
Lies meadow-fringed-so haply wash away
My sin, and flee that wrath that weighs me down.
And, lighting somewhere on an untrodden way,
I will bury this my lance, this hateful thing,
Deep in some earth-hole where no eye shall see-

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