Eclogues

Virgil

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

  1. What misery have I brought upon my head!—
  2. loosed on the flowers Siroces to my bane,
  3. and the wild boar upon my crystal springs!
  4. Whom do you fly, infatuate? gods ere now,
  5. and Dardan Paris, have made the woods their home.
  6. Let Pallas keep the towers her hand hath built,
  7. us before all things let the woods delight.
  8. The grim-eyed lioness pursues the wolf,
  9. the wolf the she-goat, the she-goat herself
  10. in wanton sport the flowering cytisus,
  11. and Corydon Alexis, each led on
  12. by their own longing. See, the ox comes home
  13. with plough up-tilted, and the shadows grow
  14. to twice their length with the departing sun,
  15. yet me love burns, for who can limit love?
  16. Ah! Corydon, Corydon, what hath crazed your wit?
  17. Your vine half-pruned hangs on the leafy elm;
  18. why haste you not to weave what need requires
  19. of pliant rush or osier? Scorned by this,
  20. elsewhere some new Alexis you will find.”