Eclogues

Virgil

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

  1. Now neither Hamadryads, no, nor songs
  2. delight me more: ye woods, away with you!
  3. No pangs of ours can change him; not though we
  4. in the mid-frost should drink of Hebrus' stream,
  5. and in wet winters face Sithonian snows,
  6. or, when the bark of the tall elm-tree bole
  7. of drought is dying, should, under Cancer's Sign,
  8. in Aethiopian deserts drive our flocks.
  9. Love conquers all things; yield we too to love!”
  10. These songs, Pierian Maids, shall it suffice
  11. your poet to have sung, the while he sat,
  12. and of slim mallow wove a basket fine:
  13. to Gallus ye will magnify their worth,
  14. Gallus, for whom my love grows hour by hour,
  15. as the green alder shoots in early Spring.
  16. Come, let us rise: the shade is wont to be
  17. baneful to singers; baneful is the shade
  18. cast by the juniper, crops sicken too
  19. in shade. Now homeward, having fed your fill—
  20. eve's star is rising—go, my she-goats, go.