Mythology & Folklore

From Vergil’s Fourth Georgic

by Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792–1822

Translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley · From Complete Poetical Works, Oxford ed. Hutchinson (1914)

Mythology & Folklore

And the cloven waters like a chasm of mountains
Stood, and received him in its mighty portal
And led him through the deep’s untrampled fountains

He went in wonder through the path immortal
Of his great Mother and her humid reign
And groves profaned not by the step of mortal

Which sounded as he passed, and lakes which rain
Replenished not girt round by marble caves
‘Wildered by the watery motion of the main

Half ‘wildered he beheld the bursting waves
Of every stream beneath the mighty earth
Phasis and Lycus which the ... sand paves,

[And] The chasm where old Enipeus has its birth
And father Tyber and Anienas[?] glow
And whence Caicus, Mysian stream, comes forth

And rock-resounding Hypanis, and thou
Eridanus who bearest like empire’s sign
Two golden horns upon thy taurine brow

Thou than whom none of the streams divine
Through garden-fields and meads with fiercer power,
Burst in their tumult on the purple brine

✦ ✦ ✦

Translated by Shelley from the Latin of Vergil.

MLA

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “From Vergil’s Fourth Georgic.” Translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/shelley/231/.

Chicago

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “From Vergil’s Fourth Georgic.” Translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/shelley/231/.

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