Eclogues

Virgil

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

  • how through the mighty void the seeds were driven
  • of earth, air, ocean, and of liquid fire,
  • how all that is from these beginnings grew,
  • and the young world itself took solid shape,
  • then 'gan its crust to harden, and in the deep
  • shut Nereus off, and mould the forms of things
  • little by little; and how the earth amazed
  • beheld the new sun shining, and the showers
  • fall, as the clouds soared higher, what time the woods
  • 'gan first to rise, and living things to roam
  • scattered among the hills that knew them not.
  • Then sang he of the stones by Pyrrha cast,
  • of Saturn's reign, and of Prometheus' theft,
  • and the Caucasian birds, and told withal
  • nigh to what fountain by his comrades left
  • the mariners cried on Hylas till the shore
  • then re-echoed “Hylas, Hylas!” soothed
  • pasiphae with the love of her white bull—
  • happy if cattle-kind had never been!—
  • o ill-starred maid, what frenzy caught thy soul