Eclogues

Virgil

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

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,

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,