Once I would kiss EunicÈ. "Back," quoth she,

And screamed and stormed; "a sorry clown kiss me?

Your country compliments, I like not such;

No lips but gentles' would I deign to touch.

Ne'er dream of kissing me: alike I shun

Your face, your language, and your tigerish fun.

How winning are your tones, how fine your air!

Your beard how silken and how sweet your hair!

Pah! you've a sick man's lips, a blackamoor's hand:

Your breath's defilement. Leave me, I command."

Thrice spat she on her robe, and, muttering low,

Scanned me, with half-shut eyes, from top to toe:

Brought all her woman's witcheries into play,

Still smiling in a set sarcastic way,

Till my blood boiled, my visage crimson grew

With indignation, as a rose with dew:

And so she left me, inly to repine

That such as she could flout such charms as mine.

O shepherds, tell me true! Am I not fair?

Am I transformed? For lately I did wear

Grace as a garment; and my cheeks, o'er them

Ran the rich growth like ivy round the stem.

Like fern my tresses o'er my temples streamed;

O'er my dark eyebrows, white my forehead gleamed:

My eyes were of AthenÈ's radiant blue,

My mouth was milk, its accents honeydew.

Then I could sing—my tones were soft indeed!—

To pipe or flute or flageolet or reed:

And me did every maid that roams the fell

Kiss and call fair: not so this city belle.

She scorns the herdsman; knows not how divine

Bacchus ranged once the valleys with his kine;

How Cypris, maddened for a herdsman's sake,

Deigned upon Phrygia's mountains to partake

His cares: and wooed, and wept, Adonis in the brake.

What was Endymion, sweet SelenÈ's love?

A herdsman's lad. Yet came she from above,

Down to green Latmos, by his side to sleep.

And did not Rhea for a herdsman weep?

Didst not thou, Zeus, become a wandering bird,

To win the love of one who drove a herd?

SelenÈ, CybelÈ, Cypris, all loved swains:

EunicÈ, loftier-bred, their kiss disdains.

Henceforth, by hill or hall, thy love disown,

Cypris, and sleep the livelong night alone.