Georgics
Virgil
Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
- So saying, an odour of ambrosial dew
- She sheds around, and all his frame therewith
- Steeps throughly; forth from his trim-combed locks
- Breathed effluence sweet, and a lithe vigour leapt
- Into his limbs. There is a cavern vast
- Scooped in the mountain-side, where wave on wave
- By the wind's stress is driven, and breaks far up
- Its inmost creeks—safe anchorage from of old
- For tempest-taken mariners: therewithin,
- Behind a rock's huge barrier, Proteus hides.
- Here in close covert out of the sun's eye
- The youth she places, and herself the while
- Swathed in a shadowy mist stands far aloof.
- And now the ravening dog-star that burns up
- The thirsty Indians blazed in heaven; his course
- The fiery sun had half devoured: the blades
- Were parched, and the void streams with droughty jaws
- Baked to their mud-beds by the scorching ray,
- When Proteus seeking his accustomed cave
- Strode from the billows: round him frolicking
- The watery folk that people the waste sea
- Sprinkled the bitter brine-dew far and wide.
- Along the shore in scattered groups to feed
- The sea-calves stretch them: while the seer himself,
- Like herdsman on the hills when evening bids
- The steers from pasture to their stall repair,
- And the lambs' bleating whets the listening wolves,
- Sits midmost on the rock and tells his tale.
- But Aristaeus, the foe within his clutch,
- Scarce suffering him compose his aged limbs,
- With a great cry leapt on him, and ere he rose
- Forestalled him with the fetters; he nathless,
- All unforgetful of his ancient craft,
- Transforms himself to every wondrous thing,
- Fire and a fearful beast, and flowing stream.
- But when no trickery found a path for flight,
- Baffled at length, to his own shape returned,
- With human lips he spake, “Who bade thee, then,
- So reckless in youth's hardihood, affront
- Our portals? or what wouldst thou hence?”—But he,
- “Proteus, thou knowest, of thine own heart thou knowest;
- For thee there is no cheating, but cease thou
- To practise upon me: at heaven's behest
- I for my fainting fortunes hither come
- An oracle to ask thee.” There he ceased.
- Whereat the seer, by stubborn force constrained,
- Shot forth the grey light of his gleaming eyes
- Upon him, and with fiercely gnashing teeth
- Unlocks his lips to spell the fates of heaven:
- “Doubt not 'tis wrath divine that plagues thee thus,
- Nor light the debt thou payest; 'tis Orpheus' self,
- Orpheus unhappy by no fault of his,
- So fates prevent not, fans thy penal fires,
- Yet madly raging for his ravished bride.
- She in her haste to shun thy hot pursuit
- Along the stream, saw not the coming death,
- Where at her feet kept ward upon the bank
- In the tall grass a monstrous water-snake.
- But with their cries the Dryad-band her peers
- Filled up the mountains to their proudest peaks:
- Wailed for her fate the heights of Rhodope,
- And tall Pangaea, and, beloved of Mars,
- The land that bowed to Rhesus, Thrace no less
- With Hebrus' stream; and Orithyia wept,
- Daughter of Acte old. But Orpheus' self,
- Soothing his love-pain with the hollow shell,
- Thee his sweet wife on the lone shore alone,
- Thee when day dawned and when it died he sang.
- Nay to the jaws of Taenarus too he came,
- Of Dis the infernal palace, and the grove
- Grim with a horror of great darkness—came,
- Entered, and faced the Manes and the King
- Of terrors, the stone heart no prayer can tame.
- Then from the deepest deeps of Erebus,
- Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades
- Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms
- Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie
- To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour
- Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;
- Matrons and men, and great heroic frames
- Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls,
- Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes.
- Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed,
- Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp
- Of dull dead water, and, to pen them fast,
- Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.
- Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death
- Stood lost in wonderment, and the Eumenides,
- Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined;
- Even Cerberus held his triple jaws agape,
- And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still.
- And now with homeward footstep he had passed
- All perils scathless, and, at length restored,
- Eurydice to realms of upper air
- Had well-nigh won, behind him following—
- So Proserpine had ruled it—when his heart
- A sudden mad desire surprised and seized—
- Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive.
- For at the very threshold of the day,
- Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve,
- He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice
- His own once more. But even with the look,
- Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond
- Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard
- Three times like thunder in the meres of hell.
- ‘Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought
- On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again
- The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep
- Closes my swimming eyes. And now farewell:
- Girt with enormous night I am borne away,
- Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more,
- These helpless hands.’ She spake, and suddenly,
- Like smoke dissolving into empty air,
- Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him
- Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak,
- Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time
- Hell's boatman brooks he pass the watery bar.
- What should he do? fly whither, twice bereaved?
- Move with what tears the Manes, with what voice
- The Powers of darkness? She indeed even now
- Death-cold was floating on the Stygian barge!
- For seven whole months unceasingly, men say,
- Beneath a skyey crag, by thy lone wave,
- Strymon, he wept, and in the caverns chill
- Unrolled his story, melting tigers' hearts,
- And leading with his lay the oaks along.
- As in the poplar-shade a nightingale
- Mourns her lost young, which some relentless swain,
- Spying, from the nest has torn unfledged, but she
- Wails the long night, and perched upon a spray
- With sad insistence pipes her dolorous strain,
- Till all the region with her wrongs o'erflows.
- No love, no new desire, constrained his soul:
- By snow-bound Tanais and the icy north,
- Far steppes to frost Rhipaean forever wed,
- Alone he wandered, lost Eurydice
- Lamenting, and the gifts of Dis ungiven.
- Scorned by which tribute the Ciconian dames,
- Amid their awful Bacchanalian rites
- And midnight revellings, tore him limb from limb,
- And strewed his fragments over the wide fields.
- Then too, even then, what time the Hebrus stream,
- Oeagrian Hebrus, down mid-current rolled,
- Rent from the marble neck, his drifting head,
- The death-chilled tongue found yet a voice to cry
- ‘Eurydice! ah! poor Eurydice!’
- With parting breath he called her, and the banks
- From the broad stream caught up ‘Eurydice!’”