Eclogues

Virgil

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

  • the mariners cried on Hylas till the shore
  • then re-echoed “Hylas, Hylas!” soothed
  • pasiphae with the love of her white bull—
  • happy if cattle-kind had never been!—
  • o ill-starred maid, what frenzy caught thy soul
  • the daughters too of Proetus filled the fields
  • with their feigned lowings, yet no one of them
  • of such unhallowed union e'er was fain
  • as with a beast to mate, though many a time
  • on her smooth forehead she had sought for horns,
  • and for her neck had feared the galling plough.
  • O ill-starred maid! thou roamest now the hills,
  • while on soft hyacinths he, his snowy side
  • reposing, under some dark ilex now
  • chews the pale herbage, or some heifer tracks
  • amid the crowding herd. Now close, ye Nymphs,
  • ye Nymphs of Dicte, close the forest-glades,
  • if haply there may chance upon mine eyes
  • the white bull's wandering foot-prints: him belike