The Eclogues

By Virgil.

Translated by John Dryden.

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Pastoral I

Tityrus and Meliboeus

The occasion of the first Pastoral was this. When Augustus had settled himself in the Roman empire, that he might reward his veteran troops for their past service, he distributed among them all the lands that lay about Cremona and Mantua, turning out the right owners for having sided with his enemies. Virgil was a sufferer among the rest; who afterwards recovered his estate by Maecenas’s intercession, and, as an instance of his gratitude, composed the following Pastoral, where he sets out his own good fortune in the person of Tityrus, and the calamities of his Mantuan neighbours in the character of Meliboeus.

Meliboeus	Beneath the shade which beechen boughs diffuse, You, Tityrus, entertain your sylvan muse. Round the wide world in banishment we roam, Forced from our pleasing fields and native home; While, stretched at ease, you sing your happy loves, And Amaryllis fills the shady groves.
Tityrus	These blessings, friend, a deity bestowed: For never can I deem him less than god. The tender firstlings of my woolly breed Shall on his holy altar often bleed. He gave my kine to graze the flowery plain, And to my pipe renewed the rural strain.
Meliboeus	I envy not your fortune, but admire, That, while the raging sword and wasteful fire Destroy the wretched neighbourhood around, No hostile arms approach your happy ground. Far different is my fate: my feeble goats With pains I drive from their forsaken cotes. And this, you see, I scarcely drag along, Who, yeaning, on the rocks has left her young; The hope and promise of my failing fold. My loss, by dire portents, the gods foretold; For, had I not been blind, I might have seen:⁠— Yon riven oak, the fairest of the green, And the hoarse raven, on the blasted bough, By croaking from the left, presaged the coming blow. But tell me, Tityrus, what heavenly power Preserved your fortunes in that fatal hour?
Tityrus	Fool that I was, I thought imperial Rome Like Mantua, where on market-days we come, And thither drive our tender lambs from home. So kids and whelps their sires and dams express, And so the great I measured by the less. But country towns, compared with her, appear Like shrubs, when lofty cypresses are near.
Meliboeus	What great occasion called you hence to Rome?
Tityrus	Freedom, which came at length, though slow to come. Nor did my search of liberty begin, Till my black hairs were changed upon my chin; Nor Amaryllis would vouchsafe a look, Till Galatea’s meaner bonds I broke. Till then a helpless, hopeless, homely swain, I sought not freedom, nor aspired to gain: Though many a victim from my folds was bought, And many a cheese to country markets brought, Yet all the little that I got, I spent, And still returned as empty as I went.
Meliboeus	We stood amazed to see your mistress mourn, Unknowing that she pined for your return: We wondered why she kept her fruit so long, For whom so late the ungathered apples hung. But now the wonder ceases, since I see She kept them only, Tityrus, for thee. For thee the bubbling springs appeared to mourn, And whispering pines made vows for thy return.
Tityrus	What should I do?⁠—While here I was enchained, No glimpse of godlike liberty remained: Nor could I hope, in any place but there To find a god so present to my prayer. There first the youth of heavenly birth I viewed, For whom our monthly victims are renewed. He heard my vows, and graciously decreed My grounds to be restored, my former flocks to feed.
Meliboeus	O fortunate old man! whose farm remains⁠— For you sufficient⁠—and requites your pains; Though rushes overspread the neighbouring plains, Though here the marshy grounds approach your fields, And there the soil a stony harvest yields. Your teeming ewes shall no strange meadows try, Nor fear a rot from tainted company. Behold! yon bordering fence of sallow-trees Is fraught with flowers; the flowers are fraught with bees: The busy bees, with a soft murmuring strain, Invite to gentle sleep the labouring swain. While from the neighbouring rock, with rural songs, The pruner’s voice the pleasing dream prolongs, Stock-doves and turtles tell their amorous pain, And, from the lofty elms, of love complain.
Tityrus	The inhabitants of seas and skies shall change, And fish on shore, and stags in air, shall range, The banished Parthian dwell on Arar’s brink, And the blue German shall the Tigris drink, Ere I, forsaking gratitude and truth, Forget the figure of that godlike youth.
Meliboeus	But we must beg our bread in climes unknown, Beneath the scorching or the freezing zone: And some to far Oaxis shall be sold, Or try the Libyan heat, or Scythian cold; The rest among the Britons