Menalcas, wet with beating winter mast.
Wondering, they asked from whence arose thy flame.
Yet more amazed, thy own Apollo came.
Flushed were his cheeks, and glowing were his eyes:
“Is she thy care? is she thy care? (he cries)
Thy false Lycoris flies thy love and thee,
And for thy rival, tempts the raging sea,
The forms of horrid war, and heaven’s inclemency.”
Silvanus came: his brows a country crown
Of fennel, and of nodding lilies, drown.
Great Pan arrived; and we beheld him too,
His cheeks and temples of vermilion hue.
“Why, Gallus, this immoderate grief? (he cried)
Think’st thou that love with tears is satisfied?
The meads are sooner drunk with morning dews,
The bees with flowery shrubs, the goats with browse.”
Unmoved, and with dejected eyes, he mourned:
He paused, and then these broken words returned:
“ ’Tis past; and pity gives me no relief:
But you, Arcadian swains, shall sing my grief,
And on your hills my last complaints renew:
So sad a song is only worthy you.
How light would lie the turf upon my breast,
If you my sufferings in your songs exprest!
Ah! that your birth and business had been mine—
To pen the sheep, and press the swelling vine!
Had Phyllis or Amyntas caused my pain,
Or any nymph or shepherd on the plain,
(Though Phyllis brown, though black, Amyntas were,
Are violets not sweet, because not fair?)
Beneath the sallows and the shady vine,
My loves had mixed their pliant limbs with mine:
Phyllis with myrtle wreaths had crowned my hair,
And soft Amyntas sung away my care.
Come, see what pleasures in our plains abound;
The woods, the fountains and the flowery ground.
As you are beauteous, were you half so true,
Here could I live, and love, and die, with only you.
Now I to fighting fields am sent afar,
And strive in winter camps with toils of war;
While you (alas, that I should find it so!)
To shun my sight, your native soil forgo,
And climb the frozen Alps, and tread the eternal snow.
Ye frosts and snows, her tender body spare!
Those are not limbs for icicles to tear.
For me, the wilds and deserts are my choice;
The muses, once my care; my once harmonious voice.
There will I sing, forsaken and alone:
The rocks and hollow caves shall echo to my moan.
The rind of every plant her name shall know;
And as the rind extends, the love shall grow.
Then on Arcadian mountains will I chase
(Mixed with the woodland nymphs) the savage race;
Nor cold shall hinder me, with horns and hounds
To thrid the thickets, or to leap the mounds.
And now methinks o’er steepy rocks I go,
And rush through sounding woods, and bend the Parthian bow;
As if with sports my sufferings I could ease,
Or by my pains the god of love appease.
My frenzy changes: I delight no more
On mountain-tops to chase the tusky boar:
No game but hopeless love my thoughts pursue:
Once more, ye nymphs, and songs, and sounding woods, adieu!
Love alters not for us his hard decrees,
Not though beneath the Thracian clime we freeze,
Or Italy’s indulgent heaven forgo,
And in mid-winter tread Sithonian snow;
Or, when the barks of elms are scorched, we keep
On Meroë’s burning plains the Libyan sheep.
In hell, and earth, and seas, and heaven above,
Love conquers all; and we must yield to Love.
My muses, here your sacred raptures end:
The verse was what I owed my suffering friend.
This while I sung, my sorrows I deceived,
And bending osiers into baskets weaved.
The song, because inspired by you, shall shine;
And Gallus will approve, because ’tis mine—
Gallus, for whom my holy flames renew,
Each hour, and every moment rise in view;
As alders, in the spring, their boles extend,
And heave so fiercely, that the bark they rend.
Now let us rise; for hoarseness oft invades
The singer’s voice, who sings beneath the shades.
From juniper unwholesome dews distill,
That blast the sooty corn, the withering herbage kill:
Away, my goats, away! for you have browsed your fill.
Colophon
The Eclogues
was completed around 38 BC by
Virgil.
It was translated from Latin in 1697 by
John Dryden.
This ebook was transcribed and produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Emma Sweeney,
and is based on digital scans from the
HathiTrust Digital Library.
The cover page is adapted from
Mercure, Argus et Io,
a painting completed in 1665 by
Adriaen van de Velde.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
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The first edition of this ebook was released on
December 1, 2023, 5:25 p.m.
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