Eclogues
Virgil
Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
- What misery have I brought upon my head!—
- loosed on the flowers Siroces to my bane,
- and the wild boar upon my crystal springs!
- Whom do you fly, infatuate? gods ere now,
- and Dardan Paris, have made the woods their home.
- Let Pallas keep the towers her hand hath built,
- us before all things let the woods delight.
- The grim-eyed lioness pursues the wolf,
- the wolf the she-goat, the she-goat herself
- in wanton sport the flowering cytisus,
- and Corydon Alexis, each led on
- by their own longing. See, the ox comes home
- with plough up-tilted, and the shadows grow
- to twice their length with the departing sun,
- yet me love burns, for who can limit love?
- Ah! Corydon, Corydon, what hath crazed your wit?
- Your vine half-pruned hangs on the leafy elm;
- why haste you not to weave what need requires
- of pliant rush or osier? Scorned by this,
- elsewhere some new Alexis you will find.”