With fifteen hundred bowmen bold,
All chosen men of might,
Who knew full well, in time of need,
To aim their shafts aright.
The hounds ran swiftly through the woods
The nimble deer to take,
And with their cries the hills and dales
An echo shrill did make.
- Vocat ingenti clamore Cithaeron,
Taygetique canes, domitrixque Epidaurus equorum:
Et vox assensu memorum ingeminata remugit.
VIRG., Georg. iii. 43.
Cithaeron loudly calls me to my way:
Thy hounds, Taygetus, open, and pursue their prey:
High Epidaurus urges on my speed,
Famed for his hills, and for his horses' breed:
From hills and dales the cheerful cries rebound:
For Echo hunts along, and propagates the sound.
DRYDEN.
Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come,
His men in armour bright;
Full twenty hundred Scottish spears,
All marching in our sight.
All men of pleasant Tividale,
Fast by the river Tweed, &c.
The country of the Scotch warrior, described in these two last
verses, has a fine romantic situation, and affords a couple of
smooth words for verse. If the reader compares the foregoing six
lines of the song with the following Latin verses, he will see how
much they are written in the spirit of Virgil:
Adversi campo apparent: hastasque reductis
Protendunt longe dextris, et spicula vibrant:-
Quique altum Praeneste viri, quique arva Gabinae
Junonis, gelidumque Anienem, et roscida rivis
Hernica saxa colunt:- qui rosea rura Velini;
Qui Tetricae horrentes rupes, montemq ue Severum,
Casperiamque colunt, porulosque et flumen Himellae:
Qui Tyberim Fabarimque bibunt.
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