Eclogues

Virgil

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

  1. This now, the very latest of my toils,
  2. vouchsafe me, Arethusa! needs must I
  3. sing a brief song to Gallus—brief, but yet
  4. such as Lycoris' self may fitly read.
  5. Who would not sing for Gallus? So, when thou
  6. beneath Sicanian billows glidest on,
  7. may Doris blend no bitter wave with thine,
  8. begin! The love of Gallus be our theme,
  9. and the shrewd pangs he suffered, while, hard by,
  10. the flat-nosed she-goats browse the tender brush.
  11. We sing not to deaf ears; no word of ours
  12. but the woods echo it. What groves or lawns
  13. held you, ye Dryad-maidens, when for love—
  14. love all unworthy of a loss so dear—
  15. Gallus lay dying? for neither did the slopes
  16. of Pindus or Parnassus stay you then,
  17. no, nor Aonian Aganippe. Him
  18. even the laurels and the tamarisks wept;
  19. for him, outstretched beneath a lonely rock,
  20. wept pine-clad Maenalus, and the flinty crags