Virgil · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| Sicilian Muses, let us sing of somewhat greater things. Orchards and low tamarisks do not please everyone; if we sing of woods, let the woods be worthy of a consul.
4| The last age of the Cumaean song has come now; the great sequence of the ages is born anew. Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new generation is sent down from high heaven. Only look kindly, chaste Lucina, on the boy at his birth, under whom the race of iron will first come to an end and a race of gold will rise up throughout the world: your own Apollo now reigns.
11| And it is in your consulship, yours, Pollio, that this glory of the age will begin, and the great months will start their march. Under your leadership any traces of our crime that remain will be made void and free the earth from its unending fear. He will receive the life of the gods, and will see heroes mingled with gods, and will himself be seen among them, and will rule a world made peaceful by his father's virtues.
18| But for you, boy, the earth, untilled, will pour out its first little gifts: ivy straying everywhere with foxglove, and Egyptian beans mingled with smiling acanthus. Unbidden, the goats will bring home udders swollen with milk, and the herds will not fear great lions. Your very cradle will pour out caressing flowers for you. The snake will die, and the treacherous poisonous plant will die; Assyrian spice will spring up everywhere.
26| And as soon as you can read of the glories of heroes and your father's deeds, and learn what courage is, the plain will slowly turn golden with soft ears of grain, the reddening grape will hang from untended brambles, and hard oaks will sweat dewy honey.
31| Still, a few traces of the old wickedness will lurk beneath, to bid men tempt Thetis with ships, ring towns with walls, and cut furrows in the earth. There will be a second Tiphys then, and a second Argo to carry chosen heroes; there will be second wars too, and great Achilles will be sent to Troy again.
37| Then, when the strength of the years has made you a man, even the merchant will give up the sea, and no ship of pine will trade its wares; every land will bear everything. The soil will not endure the hoe, nor the vineyard the pruning hook; the sturdy ploughman too will now free his bulls from the yoke. Wool will not learn to counterfeit varied colors; the ram himself in the meadows will change his fleece, now to sweetly blushing purple, now to saffron yellow; scarlet will clothe the grazing lambs of its own accord.
46| "Run on, such ages," the Fates said to their spindles, in harmony with the fixed will of destiny.
48| Enter on your great honors — the time will soon be here — dear offspring of the gods, great increase of Jupiter! See the world nodding with its vaulted mass, the lands and the expanses of sea and the depths of the sky; see how everything rejoices in the age to come!
53| O may the last part of a long life remain to me then, and breath enough to tell of your deeds: neither Thracian Orpheus nor Linus would beat me in song, though his mother stood by the one and his father by the other — Calliope by Orpheus, handsome Apollo by Linus. Even Pan, if he competed with me with Arcadia as judge, even Pan would declare himself beaten, with Arcadia as judge.
60| Begin, little boy, to know your mother with a smile: ten months have brought your mother long discomfort. Begin, little boy. Those who have not smiled at a parent — no god has honored such a one with his table, no goddess with her bed.
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