Note 4 — HYLAS AND ÆGON.
Reading edition
Before the edition of 1736 the couplet ran thus:
To whose complaints the list'ning forests bend, While one his mistress mourns, and one his friend.
In keeping with this announcement the song of Hylas, which forms the first portion of the Pastoral, was devoted to mourning an absent shepherd, and not, as at present, an absent shepherdess. When Pope made his lines commemorative of love, instead of friendship, he did little more than change the name of the man (Thyrsis) to that of a woman (Delia), and substitute the feminine for the masculine pronoun. The extravagant idea expressed in the first line of the rejected couplet is found in Oldham's translation of Moschus:
And trees leaned their attentive branches down.
There is nothing of the kind in the Greek text.