Mythology & Folklore
From Vergil’s Fourth Georgic
Translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley · From Complete Poetical Works, Oxford ed. Hutchinson (1914)
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
Codex Note
Translated by Shelley from the Latin of Vergil.
Cite this poem
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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