Eclogues

Virgil

Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.

  1. But we far hence, to burning Libya some,
  2. some to the Scythian steppes, or thy swift flood,
  3. cretan Oaxes, now must wend our way,
  4. or Britain, from the whole world sundered far.
  5. Ah! shall I ever in aftertime behold
  6. my native bounds—see many a harvest hence
  7. with ravished eyes the lowly turf-roofed cot
  8. where I was king? These fallows, trimmed so fair,
  9. some brutal soldier will possess these fields
  10. an alien master. Ah! to what a pass
  11. has civil discord brought our hapless folk!
  12. For such as these, then, were our furrows sown!
  13. Now, Meliboeus, graft your pears, now set
  14. your vines in order! Go, once happy flock,
  15. my she-goats, go. Never again shall I,
  16. stretched in green cave, behold you from afar
  17. hang from the bushy rock; my songs are sung;
  18. never again will you, with me to tend,
  19. on clover-flower, or bitter willows, browse.
TITYRUS
  1. Yet here, this night, you might repose with me,