Eclogues

Virgil

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

  1. Who would not sing for Gallus? So, when thou
  2. beneath Sicanian billows glidest on,
  3. may Doris blend no bitter wave with thine,
  4. begin! The love of Gallus be our theme,
  5. and the shrewd pangs he suffered, while, hard by,
  6. the flat-nosed she-goats browse the tender brush.
  7. We sing not to deaf ears; no word of ours
  8. but the woods echo it. What groves or lawns
  9. held you, ye Dryad-maidens, when for love—
  10. love all unworthy of a loss so dear—
  11. Gallus lay dying? for neither did the slopes
  12. of Pindus or Parnassus stay you then,
  13. no, nor Aonian Aganippe. Him
  14. even the laurels and the tamarisks wept;
  15. for him, outstretched beneath a lonely rock,
  16. wept pine-clad Maenalus, and the flinty crags
  17. of cold Lycaeus. The sheep too stood around—
  18. of us they feel no shame, poet divine;
  19. nor of the flock be thou ashamed: even fair