Eclogue X (Fairclough)

My last task this — vouchsafe me it, Arethusa! A few verses I must sing for my Gallus, yet such as Lycoris herself may read! Who would refuse verses to Gallus? If, when thou glidest beneath Sicilian waves, thou wouldst not have briny Doris blend her stream with thine, begin! Let us tell of Gallus' anxious loves, while the blunt-nosed goats crop the tender brakes. We sing to no deaf ears; the woods echo every note.

What groves, what glades were your abode, ye virgin Naiads, when Gallus was pining with a love unrequited? For no heights of Parnassus or of Pindus, no Aonian Aganippe made you tarry. For him even the laurels, even the tamarisks wept. For him, as he lay beneath a lonely rock, even pine-crowned Maenalus wept, and the crags of cold Lycaeus. The sheep, too, are standing around — they think no shame of us, and think thou no shame of the flock, heavenly poet; even fair Adonis fed sheep beside the streams.

The shepherd came, too; slowly the swineherds came; Menalcas came, dripping, from the winter's mast. All ask: "Whence this love of thine?" Apollo came. "Gallus," he said, "what madness this? Thy sweetheart Lycoris hath followed another amid snows and amid rugged camps." Silvanus came, with rustic glories on his brow, waving his fennel flowers and tall lilies. Pan came, Arcady's god, and we ourselves saw him, crimsoned with vermilion and blood-red elderberries. "Will there be no end?" he cried. "Love recks naught of this: neither is cruel Love sated with tears, nor the grass with the rills, nor bees with the clover, nor goats with leaves."

But sadly Gallus replied: "Yet ye, O Arcadians, will sing this tale to your mountains; Arcadians only know how to sing. O how softly then would my bones repose, if in other days your pipes should tell my love! And O that I had been one of you, the shepherd of a flock of yours, or the dresser of your ripened grapes! Surely, my darling, whether it were Phyllis or Amyntas, or whoever it were — and what if Amyntas be dark? violets, too, are black and black are hyacinths — my darling would be lying at my side among the willows, under the creeping vine — Phyllis culling me garlands, Amyntas singing songs. Here are cold springs, Lycoris, here soft meadows, here woodland; here, with thee, time alone would wear me away. But now a mad passion for the stern god of war keeps me in arms, in the midst of weapons and opposing foes; while thou, far from thy native soil — O that it were not for me to believe such a tale — art gazing, ah, heartless one! on Alpine snows and the frost-bound Rhine, apart from me, all alone. Ah, may the frosts not harm thee! Ah, may not the jagged ice cut thy tender feet!

I will be gone, and the strains I composed in Chalcidian verse I will play on a Sicilian shepherd's pipe. Well I know that in the woods, amid wild beasts' dens, it is better to suffer and carve my love on the young trees. They will grow; thou, too, my love, wilt grow. Meanwhile, with the Nymphs I will roam o'er Maenalus, or hunt fierce boars. No frosts will stay me from girdling with my hounds the glades of Parthenius. Even now, methinks, I pass over rocks and echoing groves; 'tis a joy to wing Cydonian shafts from my Parthian bow! As if this could heal my frenzy, or as if that god could learn pity for human sorrows! Now once more, nor Hamadryads nor even songs have charms for me; once more adieu, even ye woods! No toils of ours can change that god, not though in the heart of winter we drink the Hebrus and brave the Thracian snows and their wintry sleet, not though, when the bark dies and withers on the lofty elm, we drive to and fro the Aethiopians' sheep beneath the star of Cancer! Love conquers all; let us, too, yield to Love! "

These strains, Muses divine, it will be enough for your poet to have sung, while he sits idle and twines a basket of slender hibiscus. These ye shall make of highest worth in Gallus' eyes — Gallus, for whom my love grows hour by hour as fast as in the dawn of spring shoots up the green alder. Let us rise; the shade oft brings peril to singers. The juniper's shade brings peril; hurtful to the corn, too, is the shade. Get ye home, my full-fed goats — the Evening-star comes — get ye home!