Eclogues
Virgil
Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
- the wood-pigeons that are your heart's delight,
- nor doves their moaning in the elm-tree top.
- Sooner shall light stags, therefore, feed in air,
- the seas their fish leave naked on the strand,
- germans and Parthians shift their natural bounds,
- and these the Arar, those the Tigris drink,
- than from my heart his face and memory fade.
- But we far hence, to burning Libya some,
- some to the Scythian steppes, or thy swift flood,
- cretan Oaxes, now must wend our way,
- or Britain, from the whole world sundered far.
- Ah! shall I ever in aftertime behold
- my native bounds—see many a harvest hence
- with ravished eyes the lowly turf-roofed cot
- where I was king? These fallows, trimmed so fair,
- some brutal soldier will possess these fields
- an alien master. Ah! to what a pass
- has civil discord brought our hapless folk!
- For such as these, then, were our furrows sown!
- Now, Meliboeus, graft your pears, now set