Eclogues

Virgil

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

  • the choir of Phoebus rose to greet him; how
  • the shepherd Linus, singer of songs divine,
  • brow-bound with flowers and bitter parsley, spake:
  • “These reeds the Muses give thee, take them thou,
  • erst to the aged bard of Ascra given,
  • wherewith in singing he was wont to draw
  • time-rooted ash-trees from the mountain heights.
  • With these the birth of the Grynean grove
  • be voiced by thee, that of no grove beside
  • apollo more may boast him.” Wherefore speak
  • of Scylla, child of Nisus, who, 'tis said,
  • her fair white loins with barking monsters girt
  • vexed the Dulichian ships, and, in the deep
  • swift-eddying whirlpool, with her sea-dogs tore
  • the trembling mariners? or how he told
  • of the changed limbs of Tereus—what a feast,
  • what gifts, to him by Philomel were given;
  • how swift she sought the desert, with what wings
  • hovered in anguish o'er her ancient home?
  • All that, of old, Eurotas, happy stream,