Eclogues

Virgil

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

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