On thee, dear wife, in deserts all alone,
He called, sighed, sung: his griefs with day begun,
Nor were they finished with the setting sun.
E’en to the dark dominions of the night
He took his way, through forests void of light,
And dared amidst the trembling ghosts to sing,
And stood before the inexorable king.
The infernal troops like passing shadows glide,
And, listening, crowd the sweet musician’s side—
(Not flocks of birds, when driven by storms or night,
Stretch to the forest with so thick a flight)—
Men, matrons, children, and the unmarried maid,
The mighty hero’s more majestic shade,
And youths, on funeral piles before their parents laid.
All these Cocytus bounds with squalid reeds,
With muddy ditches, and with deadly weeds;
And baleful Styx encompasses around,
With nine slow circling streams, the unhappy ground.
E’en from the depths of hell the damned advance;
The infernal mansions, nodding, seem to dance;
The gaping three-mouthed dog forgets to snarl;
The Furies hearken, and their snakes uncurl;
Ixion seems no more his pains to feel,
But leans attentive on his standing wheel.
All dangers past, at length the lovely bride
In safety goes, with her melodious guide,
Longing the common light again to share,
And draw the vital breath of upper air—
He first; and close behind him followed she;
For such was Proserpine’s severe decree—
When strong desires the impatient youth invade,
By little caution and much love betrayed:
A fault, which easy pardon might receive,
Were lovers judges, or could hell forgive:
For near the confines of ethereal light,
And longing for the glimmering of a sight,
The unwary lover cast his eyes behind,
Forgetful of the law, nor master of his mind.
Straight all his hopes exhaled in empty smoke;
And his long toils were forfeit for a look.
Three flashes of blue lightning gave the sign
Of covenants broke; three peals of thunder join.
Then thus the bride; “What fury seized on thee,
Unhappy man! to lose thy self and me?
Dragged back again by cruel Destinies,
An iron slumber shuts my swimming eyes.
And now farewell! Involved in shades of night,
For ever I am ravished from thy sight.
In vain I reach my feeble hands, to join
In sweet embraces—ah! no longer thine!”
She said: and from his eyes the fleeting fair
Retired like subtle smoke dissolved in air,
And left her hopeless lover in despair.
In vain, with folding arms, the youth essayed
To stop her flight, and strain the flying shade:
He prays; he raves; all means in vain he tries,
With rage inflamed, astonished with surprise;
But she returned no more, to bless his longing eyes.
Nor would the infernal ferryman once more
Be bribed to waft him to the farther shore.
What should he do, who twice had lost his love?
What notes invent, what new petitions move?
Her soul already was consigned to fate,
And shivering in the leaky sculler sat.
For seven continued months, if fame say true,
The wretched swain his sorrows did renew:
By Strymon’s freezing streams he sat alone:
The rocks were moved to pity with his moan:
Trees bent their heads to hear him sing his wrongs:
Fierce tigers couched around, and lolled their fawning tongues.
So, close in poplar shades, her children gone,
The mother nightingale laments alone,
Whose nest some prying churl had found, and thence
By stealth, conveyed the unfeathered innocence.
But she supplies the night with mournful strains;
And melancholy music fills the plains.
Sad Orpheus thus his tedious hours employs,
Averse from Venus, and from nuptial joys.
Alone he tempts the frozen floods, alone
The unhappy climes, where spring was never known:
He mourned his wretched wife, in vain restored,
And Pluto’s unavailing boon deplored.
The Thracian matrons—who the youth accused
Of love disdained, and marriage-rites refused—
With furies and nocturnal orgies fired,
At length against his sacred life conspired.
Whom e’en the savage beasts had spared, they killed,
And strewed his mangled limbs about the field.
Then, when his head, from his fair shoulders torn,
Washed by the waters, was on Hebrus borne,
E’en then his trembling tongue invoked his bride;
“With his last voice, ‘Eurydice,’ he cried,
‘Eurydice,’ the rocks and river-banks replied.”
This answer Proteus gave; nor more he said,
But in the billows plunged his hoary head;
And where he leaped, the waves in circles widely spread.
The nymph returned, her drooping son to cheer,
And bade him banish his superfluous fear:
“For now (said she) the cause is known, from whence
Thy woe succeeded, and for what offence.
The nymphs, companions of the unhappy maid,
This punishment upon thy crimes have laid;
And sent a plague among thy thriving bees.—
With vows and suppliant prayers their powers appease:
The soft Napaean race will soon repent
Their anger, and remit the punishment.
The secret in an easy method lies;
Select four brawny bulls for sacrifice,
Which on Lycaeus graze, without a guide;
Add four fair heifers yet in yoke untried.
For these, four altars in their temple rear,
And then adore the woodland powers with prayer.
From the slain victims pour the streaming blood,
And leave their bodies in the shady wood:
Nine mornings thence, Lethaean poppy bring,
To appease the manes of the poet’s king,
And, to propitiate his offended bride,
A fatted calf and a black ewe provide:
This finished, to the former woods repair.”
His mother’s precepts he performs with care;
The temple visits, and adores with prayer;
Four altars raises; from his herd he culls,
For slaughter, four the fairest of his bulls:
Four heifers from his female store he took,
All fair, and all unknowing of the yoke.
Nine mornings thence, with sacrifice and prayers,
The powers atoned, he to the grove repairs.
Behold a prodigy! for, from within
The broken bowels and the bloated skin,
A buzzing noise of bees their ears alarms;
Straight issue through the sides assembling swarms.
Dark as a cloud, they make a wheeling flight,
Then on a neighbouring tree, descending, light:
Like a large cluster of black grapes they show,
And make a large dependence from the bough.
Thus have I sung of fields, and flocks, and trees,
And of the waxen work of labouring bees:
While mighty Caesar, thundering from afar,
Seeks on Euphrates’ banks the spoils of war;
With conquering arts asserts his country’s cause,
With arts of peace the willing people draws;
On the glad earth the golden age renews,
And his great father’s path to heaven pursues;
While I at Naples pass my peaceful days,
Affecting studies of less noisy praise;
And, bold through youth, beneath the beechen shade,
The lays of shepherds, and their loves, have played.
Colophon
The Georgics
was completed around 29 BC by
Virgil.
It was translated from Latin in 1697 by
John
