SHEPHERDS, ye who wander with your white flocks feeding, Your white flocks and your goats, on this airy brow, A little thing Clitagoras entreats, but dear exceeding, By Earth, by the Queen to whom dead men bow: Let the sheep bleat near me still, the lad their warder, As soft they feed, sit piping on his rude rock-seat; Then, when spring comes, let a fellow set in order A flower or two, and so make my gravestone sweet; And with milk let one bedew it from a ewe late-deliver'd, Holding up the udder, that the warm stream jet Just a little on the base: in the land dark-river'd I shall know, shall repay it. Do the dead forget? |