Georgics
Virgil
Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
- But that cry,
- Even from her chamber in the river-deeps,
- His mother heard: around her spun the nymphs
- Milesian wool stained through with hyaline dye,
- Drymo, Xantho, Ligea, Phyllodoce,
- Their glossy locks o'er snowy shoulders shed,
- Cydippe and Lycorias yellow-haired,
- A maiden one, one newly learned even then
- To bear Lucina's birth-pang. Clio, too,
- And Beroe, sisters, ocean-children both,
- Both zoned with gold and girt with dappled fell,
- Ephyre and Opis, and from Asian meads
- Deiopea, and, bow at length laid by,
- Fleet-footed Arethusa. But in their midst
- Fair Clymene was telling o'er the tale
- Of Vulcan's idle vigilance and the stealth
- Of Mars' sweet rapine, and from Chaos old
- Counted the jostling love-joys of the Gods.
- Charmed by whose lay, the while their woolly tasks
- With spindles down they drew, yet once again
- Smote on his mother's ears the mournful plaint
- Of Aristaeus; on their glassy thrones
- Amazement held them all; but Arethuse
- Before the rest put forth her auburn head,
- Peering above the wave-top, and from far
- Exclaimed, “Cyrene, sister, not for naught
- Scared by a groan so deep, behold! 'tis he,
- Even Aristaeus, thy heart's fondest care,
- Here by the brink of the Peneian sire
- Stands woebegone and weeping, and by name
- Cries out upon thee for thy cruelty.”
- To whom, strange terror knocking at her heart,
- “Bring, bring him to our sight,” the mother cried;
- “His feet may tread the threshold even of Gods.”
- So saying, she bids the flood yawn wide and yield
- A pathway for his footsteps; but the wave
- Arched mountain-wise closed round him, and within
- Its mighty bosom welcomed, and let speed
- To the deep river-bed. And now, with eyes
- Of wonder gazing on his mother's hall
- And watery kingdom and cave-prisoned pools
- And echoing groves, he went, and, stunned by that
- Stupendous whirl of waters, separate saw
- All streams beneath the mighty earth that glide,
- Phasis and Lycus, and that fountain-head
- Whence first the deep Enipeus leaps to light,
- Whence father Tiber, and whence Anio's flood,
- And Hypanis that roars amid his rocks,
- And Mysian Caicus, and, bull-browed
- 'Twixt either gilded horn, Eridanus,
- Than whom none other through the laughing plains
- More furious pours into the purple sea.
- Soon as the chamber's hanging roof of stone
- Was gained, and now Cyrene from her son
- Had heard his idle weeping, in due course
- Clear water for his hands the sisters bring,
- With napkins of shorn pile, while others heap
- The board with dainties, and set on afresh
- The brimming goblets; with Panchaian fires
- Upleap the altars; then the mother spake,
- “Take beakers of Maconian wine,” she said,
- “Pour we to Ocean.” Ocean, sire of all,
- She worships, and the sister-nymphs who guard
- The hundred forests and the hundred streams;
- Thrice Vesta's fire with nectar clear she dashed,
- Thrice to the roof-top shot the flame and shone:
- Armed with which omen she essayed to speak:
- “In Neptune's gulf Carpathian dwells a seer,
- Caerulean Proteus, he who metes the main
- With fish-drawn chariot of two-footed steeds;
- Now visits he his native home once more,
- Pallene and the Emathian ports; to him
- We nymphs do reverence, ay, and Nereus old;
- For all things knows the seer, both those which are
- And have been, or which time hath yet to bring;
- So willed it Neptune, whose portentous flocks,
- And loathly sea-calves 'neath the surge he feeds.
- Him first, my son, behoves thee seize and bind
- That he may all the cause of sickness show,
- And grant a prosperous end. For save by force
- No rede will he vouchsafe, nor shalt thou bend
- His soul by praying; whom once made captive, ply
- With rigorous force and fetters; against these
- His wiles will break and spend themselves in vain.
- I, when the sun has lit his noontide fires,
- When the blades thirst, and cattle love the shade,
- Myself will guide thee to the old man's haunt,
- Whither he hies him weary from the waves,
- That thou mayst safelier steal upon his sleep.
- But when thou hast gripped him fast with hand and gyve,
- Then divers forms and bestial semblances
- Shall mock thy grasp; for sudden he will change
- To bristly boar, fell tigress, dragon scaled,
- And tawny-tufted lioness, or send forth
- A crackling sound of fire, and so shake of
- The fetters, or in showery drops anon
- Dissolve and vanish. But the more he shifts
- His endless transformations, thou, my son,
- More straitlier clench the clinging bands, until
- His body's shape return to that thou sawest,
- When with closed eyelids first he sank to sleep.”
- So saying, an odour of ambrosial dew
- She sheds around, and all his frame therewith
- Steeps throughly; forth from his trim-combed locks
- Breathed effluence sweet, and a lithe vigour leapt
- Into his limbs. There is a cavern vast
- Scooped in the mountain-side, where wave on wave
- By the wind's stress is driven, and breaks far up
- Its inmost creeks—safe anchorage from of old
- For tempest-taken mariners: therewithin,
- Behind a rock's huge barrier, Proteus hides.
- Here in close covert out of the sun's eye
- The youth she places, and herself the while
- Swathed in a shadowy mist stands far aloof.
- And now the ravening dog-star that burns up
- The thirsty Indians blazed in heaven; his course
- The fiery sun had half devoured: the blades
- Were parched, and the void streams with droughty jaws
- Baked to their mud-beds by the scorching ray,
- When Proteus seeking his accustomed cave
- Strode from the billows: round him frolicking
- The watery folk that people the waste sea
- Sprinkled the bitter brine-dew far and wide.
- Along the shore in scattered groups to feed
- The sea-calves stretch them: while the seer himself,
- Like herdsman on the hills when evening bids
- The steers from pasture to their stall repair,
- And the lambs' bleating whets the listening wolves,
- Sits midmost on the rock and tells his tale.
- But Aristaeus, the foe within his clutch,
- Scarce suffering him compose his aged limbs,
- With a great cry leapt on him, and ere he rose
- Forestalled him with the fetters; he nathless,
- All unforgetful of his ancient craft,
- Transforms himself to every wondrous thing,
- Fire and a fearful beast, and flowing stream.
- But when no trickery found a path for flight,
- Baffled at length, to his own shape returned,
- With human lips he spake, “Who bade thee, then,
- So reckless in youth's hardihood, affront
- Our portals? or what wouldst thou hence?”—But he,
- “Proteus, thou knowest, of thine own heart thou knowest;
- For thee there is no cheating, but cease thou
- To practise upon me: at heaven's behest
- I for my fainting fortunes hither come
- An oracle to ask thee.” There he ceased.
- Whereat the seer, by stubborn force constrained,
- Shot forth the grey light of his gleaming eyes
- Upon him, and with fiercely gnashing teeth
- Unlocks his lips to spell the fates of heaven:
- “Doubt not 'tis wrath divine that plagues thee thus,
- Nor light the debt thou payest; 'tis Orpheus' self,
- Orpheus unhappy by no fault of his,
- So fates prevent not, fans thy penal fires,
- Yet madly raging for his ravished bride.
- She in her haste to shun thy hot pursuit
- Along the stream, saw not the coming death,
- Where at her feet kept ward upon the bank
- In the tall grass a monstrous water-snake.
- But with their cries the Dryad-band her peers
- Filled up the mountains to their proudest peaks:
- Wailed for her fate the heights of Rhodope,
- And tall Pangaea, and, beloved of Mars,
- The land that bowed to Rhesus, Thrace no less
- With Hebrus' stream; and Orithyia wept,
- Daughter of Acte old. But Orpheus' self,
- Soothing his love-pain with the hollow shell,
- Thee his sweet wife on the lone shore alone,
- Thee when day dawned and when it died he sang.
- Nay to the jaws of Taenarus too he came,
- Of Dis the infernal palace, and the grove
- Grim with a horror of great darkness—came,
- Entered, and faced the Manes and the King
- Of terrors, the stone heart no prayer can tame.
- Then from the deepest deeps of Erebus,
- Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades
- Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms
- Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie
- To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour
- Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;
- Matrons and men, and great heroic frames
- Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls,
- Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes.
- Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed,
- Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp
- Of dull dead water, and, to pen them fast,
- Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.
- Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death
- Stood lost in wonderment, and the Eumenides,
- Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined;
- Even Cerberus held his triple jaws agape,
- And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still.
- And now with homeward footstep he had passed
- All perils scathless, and, at length restored,
- Eurydice to realms of upper air
- Had well-nigh won, behind him following—
- So Proserpine had ruled it—when his heart
- A sudden mad desire surprised and seized—
- Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive.
- For at the very threshold of the day,
- Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve,
- He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice
- His own once more. But even with the look,
- Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond
- Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard
- Three times like thunder in the meres of hell.
- ‘Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought
- On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again
- The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep
- Closes my swimming eyes. And now farewell:
- Girt with enormous night I am borne away,
- Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more,
- These helpless hands.’ She spake, and suddenly,
- Like smoke dissolving into empty air,
- Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him
- Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak,
- Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time
- Hell's boatman brooks he pass the watery bar.
- What should he do? fly whither, twice bereaved?
- Move with what tears the Manes, with what voice
- The Powers of darkness? She indeed even now
- Death-cold was floating on the Stygian barge!
- For seven whole months unceasingly, men say,
- Beneath a skyey crag, by thy lone wave,
- Strymon, he wept, and in the caverns chill
- Unrolled his story, melting tigers' hearts,
- And leading with his lay the oaks along.
- As in the poplar-shade a nightingale
- Mourns her lost young, which some relentless swain,
- Spying, from the nest has torn unfledged, but she
- Wails the long night, and perched upon a spray
- With sad insistence pipes her dolorous strain,
- Till all the region with her wrongs o'erflows.
- No love, no new desire, constrained his soul:
- By snow-bound Tanais and the icy north,
- Far steppes to frost Rhipaean forever wed,
- Alone he wandered, lost Eurydice
- Lamenting, and the gifts of Dis ungiven.
- Scorned by which tribute the Ciconian dames,
- Amid their awful Bacchanalian rites
- And midnight revellings, tore him limb from limb,
- And strewed his fragments over the wide fields.
- Then too, even then, what time the Hebrus stream,
- Oeagrian Hebrus, down mid-current rolled,
- Rent from the marble neck, his drifting head,
- The death-chilled tongue found yet a voice to cry
- ‘Eurydice! ah! poor Eurydice!’
- With parting breath he called her, and the banks
- From the broad stream caught up ‘Eurydice!’”
- So Proteus ending plunged into the deep,
- And, where he plunged, beneath the eddying whirl
- Churned into foam the water, and was gone;
- But not Cyrene, who unquestioned thus
- Bespake the trembling listener: “Nay, my son,
- From that sad bosom thou mayst banish care:
- Hence came that plague of sickness, hence the nymphs,
- With whom in the tall woods the dance she wove,
- Wrought on thy bees, alas! this deadly bane.
- Bend thou before the Dell-nymphs, gracious powers:
- Bring gifts, and sue for pardon: they will grant
- Peace to thine asking, and an end of wrath.
- But how to approach them will I first unfold—
- Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk,
- That browse to-day the green Lycaean heights,
- Pick from thy herds, as many kine to match,
- Whose necks the yoke pressed never: then for these
- Build up four altars by the lofty fanes,
- And from their throats let gush the victims' blood,
- And in the greenwood leave their bodies lone.
- Then, when the ninth dawn hath displayed its beams,
- To Orpheus shalt thou send his funeral dues,
- Poppies of Lethe, and let slay a sheep
- Coal-black, then seek the grove again, and soon
- For pardon found adore Eurydice
- With a slain calf for victim.”
- No delay:
- The self-same hour he hies him forth to do
- His mother's bidding: to the shrine he came,
- The appointed altars reared, and thither led
- Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk,
- With kine to match, that never yoke had known;
- Then, when the ninth dawn had led in the day,
- To Orpheus sent his funeral dues, and sought
- The grove once more. But sudden, strange to tell
- A portent they espy: through the oxen's flesh,
- Waxed soft in dissolution, hark! there hum
- Bees from the belly; the rent ribs overboil
- In endless clouds they spread them, till at last
- On yon tree-top together fused they cling,
- And drop their cluster from the bending boughs.
- So sang I of the tilth of furrowed fields,
- Of flocks and trees, while Caesar's majesty
- Launched forth the levin-bolts of war by deep
- Euphrates, and bare rule o'er willing folk
- Though vanquished, and essayed the heights of heaven.
- I Virgil then, of sweet Parthenope
- The nursling, wooed the flowery walks of peace
- Inglorious, who erst trilled for shepherd-wights
- The wanton ditty, and sang in saucy youth
- Thee, Tityrus, 'neath the spreading beech tree's shade.