Eclogues

Virgil

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

  1. Whilst thou—Ah! might I but believe it not!—
  2. alone without me, and from home afar,
  3. look'st upon Alpine snows and frozen Rhine.
  4. Ah! may the frost not hurt thee, may the sharp
  5. and jagged ice not wound thy tender feet!
  6. I will depart, re-tune the songs I framed
  7. in verse Chalcidian to the oaten reed
  8. of the Sicilian swain. Resolved am I
  9. in the woods, rather, with wild beasts to couch,
  10. and bear my doom, and character my love
  11. upon the tender tree-trunks: they will grow,
  12. and you, my love, grow with them. And meanwhile
  13. I with the Nymphs will haunt Mount Maenalus,
  14. or hunt the keen wild boar. No frost so cold
  15. but I will hem with hounds thy forest-glades,
  16. parthenius. Even now, methinks, I range
  17. o'er rocks, through echoing groves, and joy to launch
  18. Cydonian arrows from a Parthian bow.—
  19. as if my madness could find healing thus,
  20. or that god soften at a mortal's grief!