Eclogues
Virgil
Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
- or Britain, from the whole world sundered far.
- Ah! shall I ever in aftertime behold
- my native bounds—see many a harvest hence
- with ravished eyes the lowly turf-roofed cot
- where I was king? These fallows, trimmed so fair,
- some brutal soldier will possess these fields
- an alien master. Ah! to what a pass
- has civil discord brought our hapless folk!
- For such as these, then, were our furrows sown!
- Now, Meliboeus, graft your pears, now set
- your vines in order! Go, once happy flock,
- my she-goats, go. Never again shall I,
- stretched in green cave, behold you from afar
- hang from the bushy rock; my songs are sung;
- never again will you, with me to tend,
- on clover-flower, or bitter willows, browse.
- Yet here, this night, you might repose with me,
- on green leaves pillowed: apples ripe have I,
- soft chestnuts, and of curdled milk enow.
- And, see, the farm-roof chimneys smoke afar,