Georgics
Virgil
Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
- ‘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!’”
- So Proteus ending plunged into the deep,
- And, where he plunged, beneath the eddying whirl
- Churned into foam the water, and was gone;
- But not Cyrene, who unquestioned thus
- Bespake the trembling listener: “Nay, my son,
- From that sad bosom thou mayst banish care:
- Hence came that plague of sickness, hence the nymphs,
- With whom in the tall woods the dance she wove,
- Wrought on thy bees, alas! this deadly bane.
- Bend thou before the Dell-nymphs, gracious powers:
- Bring gifts, and sue for pardon: they will grant
- Peace to thine asking, and an end of wrath.
- But how to approach them will I first unfold—
- Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk,
- That browse to-day the green Lycaean heights,
- Pick from thy herds, as many kine to match,
- Whose necks the yoke pressed never: then for these
- Build up four altars by the lofty fanes,
- And from their throats let gush the victims' blood,
- And in the greenwood leave their bodies lone.
- Then, when the ninth dawn hath displayed its beams,
- To Orpheus shalt thou send his funeral dues,
- Poppies of Lethe, and let slay a sheep
- Coal-black, then seek the grove again, and soon
- For pardon found adore Eurydice
- With a slain calf for victim.”