Nature

Epigram 4 (Edmonds)

by Theocritus fl. c. 270 BC

Translated by J. M. Edmonds (1912) · From The Greek Bucolic Poets (Loeb, 1912)

Nature

When you turn the corner of yonder lane, sweet Goatherd, where the oak-trees are, you'll find a new-carved effigy of fig-wood, without legs or ears and the bark still upon it, but nevertheless an able servant of the Cyprian. There’s a brave little sacrificial close runs round it, and a never-ceasing freshet that springs from the rocks there is greened all about with bays and myrtles and fragrant cypress, among which the mother o’ grapes doth spread and twine, and in spring the blackbirds cry their lisping medleys of clear-toned song, and the babbling nightingales cry them back their warblings with the honey voice that sings from their tuneful throats. Thither go, and sit you down and pray that pretty fellow to make cease my love of Daphnis, and I'll straightway offer him a fat young goat; but should he say me nay, then I’ll make him three sacrifices if he’ll win me his love, a heifer, a shaggy buck-goat, and a pet lamb I am rearing; and may the God hear and heed your prayer.

This translation is printed as prose in its source edition.

MLA

Theocritus. “Epigram 4 (Edmonds).” Translated by J. M. Edmonds. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/theocritus/110/.

Chicago

Theocritus. “Epigram 4 (Edmonds).” Translated by J. M. Edmonds. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/theocritus/110/.

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