Eclogues

Virgil

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

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

following the herd, or by green pasture lured,

some kine may guide to the Gortynian stalls.

Then sings he of the maid so wonder-struck

with the apples of the Hesperids, and then

with moss-bound, bitter bark rings round the forms

of Phaethon's fair sisters, from the ground

up-towering into poplars. Next he sings

of Gallus wandering by Permessus' stream,

and by a sister of the Muses led

to the Aonian mountains, and how all

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,