Eclogues

Virgil

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

  1. here might our lives with time have worn away.
  2. But me mad love of the stern war-god holds
  3. armed amid weapons and opposing foes.
  4. Whilst thou—Ah! might I but believe it not!—
  5. alone without me, and from home afar,
  6. look'st upon Alpine snows and frozen Rhine.
  7. Ah! may the frost not hurt thee, may the sharp
  8. and jagged ice not wound thy tender feet!
  9. I will depart, re-tune the songs I framed
  10. in verse Chalcidian to the oaten reed
  11. of the Sicilian swain. Resolved am I
  12. in the woods, rather, with wild beasts to couch,
  13. and bear my doom, and character my love
  14. upon the tender tree-trunks: they will grow,
  15. and you, my love, grow with them. And meanwhile
  16. I with the Nymphs will haunt Mount Maenalus,
  17. or hunt the keen wild boar. No frost so cold
  18. but I will hem with hounds thy forest-glades,
  19. parthenius. Even now, methinks, I range
  20. o'er rocks, through echoing groves, and joy to launch