Eclogues

Virgil

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

  1. and the shrewd pangs he suffered, while, hard by,
  2. the flat-nosed she-goats browse the tender brush.
  3. We sing not to deaf ears; no word of ours
  4. but the woods echo it. What groves or lawns
  5. held you, ye Dryad-maidens, when for love—
  6. love all unworthy of a loss so dear—
  7. Gallus lay dying? for neither did the slopes
  8. of Pindus or Parnassus stay you then,
  9. no, nor Aonian Aganippe. Him
  10. even the laurels and the tamarisks wept;
  11. for him, outstretched beneath a lonely rock,
  12. wept pine-clad Maenalus, and the flinty crags
  13. of cold Lycaeus. The sheep too stood around—
  14. of us they feel no shame, poet divine;
  15. nor of the flock be thou ashamed: even fair
  16. Adonis by the rivers fed his sheep—
  17. came shepherd too, and swine-herd footing slow,
  18. and, from the winter-acorns dripping-wet
  19. Menalcas. All with one accord exclaim:
  20. “From whence this love of thine?” Apollo came;