Virgil · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| [Meliboeus] Tityrus, lying back under the cover of a spreading beech, you practice the woodland Muse on a slender reed pipe; we are leaving the borders of our homeland and our sweet fields. We are fleeing our homeland; you, Tityrus, at ease in the shade, teach the forest to ring with the name of lovely Amaryllis.Tityrus] Meliboeus, it was a god who made this leisure for us. For he will always be a god to me; a tender lamb from our folds will often stain his altar. It was he who allowed my cattle to wander, as you see, and me myself to play what I like on my country pipe. [Meliboeus] I do not begrudge it — rather, I am amazed: there is such turmoil everywhere in all the countryside. Look, I myself, sick at heart, am driving my goats on and on; this one, Tityrus, I can barely lead. For just now, here among the thick hazels, she gave birth to twins, the hope of the flock, and left them, ah, on the bare flint. I remember how often oaks struck from the sky foretold this misfortune to us, if my mind had not been blind. But still, Tityrus, tell us who this god of yours is. [Tityrus] The city they call Rome, Meliboeus, I thought, fool that I was, was like this one of ours, where we shepherds often drive the tender young of our sheep.
22| So I knew puppies were like dogs, so I knew kids were like their mothers, so I used to compare great things with small. But this city has raised its head as high among other cities as cypresses do among the pliant wayfaring trees. [Meliboeus] And what was your great reason for seeing Rome? [Tityrus] Freedom, which, though late, still looked back on me in my idleness, after my beard was falling whiter when it was trimmed; still, she looked back and came after a long time, now that Amaryllis has me and Galatea has left me. For — I will confess it — while Galatea held me, I had no hope of liberty and no care for my savings. Though many victims left my pens, and much rich cheese was pressed for the ungrateful town, my right hand never came home heavy with money. [Meliboeus] I wondered why you called sadly on the gods, Amaryllis, and for whom you let the apples hang on their trees. Tityrus was away. The very pines, Tityrus, the very springs, these very orchards were calling for you. [Tityrus] What was I to do? I could not leave my slavery, nor find gods so ready to help anywhere else.
42| Here, Meliboeus, I saw that young man for whom our altars smoke twice six days every year. Here he was the first to give me an answer when I asked: "Graze your cattle as before, boys; rear your bulls." [Meliboeus] Fortunate old man, so your land will remain, and it is large enough for you, though bare stone and marsh cover all your pastures with muddy rushes. No unfamiliar fodder will harm your pregnant ewes, nor will diseases from a neighbor's flock infect them. Fortunate old man, here among familiar rivers and sacred springs you will enjoy the cool shade. On this side, as always, the hedge on your neighbor's boundary, whose willow blossoms the bees of Hybla feed on, will often coax you into sleep with its soft humming; on that side, under the high rock, the leaf-pruner will sing to the breezes; and meanwhile the hoarse wood pigeons, your delight, will not stop cooing, nor the turtledove moaning from the lofty elm. [Tityrus] Sooner, then, will light-footed stags graze in the air, and the seas leave their fish naked on the shore; sooner, both of them wandering in exile across each other's borders, will the Parthian drink the Arar or Germany the Tigris, than his face will slip from my heart.
64| [Meliboeus] But we must go from here, some to the thirsty Africans, some to Scythia and the chalky, swift Oaxes, and to the Britons, wholly cut off from all the world. Ah, will I ever, long afterward, see my native land again and the turf-heaped roof of my poor cottage, and look with wonder, after some harvests, at the few ears of grain that were my kingdom? A godless soldier will own these well-tilled fallows, a barbarian these crops. See where discord has brought our wretched citizens! For these we have sown our fields! Graft your pears now, Meliboeus, set your vines in rows! Go, my goats, go, once a happy flock. Never again, stretched out in a green cave, will I watch you from far off hanging on a bushy rock; I will sing no songs; you will not crop the flowering clover and bitter willows with me as your herdsman, my goats. [Tityrus] Still, you could rest here with me tonight on green leaves. I have ripe apples, soft chestnuts, and plenty of pressed cheese; and already the rooftops of the farmhouses are smoking in the distance, and longer shadows fall from the high mountains.
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