Virgil · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| The Muse of the shepherds Damon and Alphesiboeus, at whose contest the heifer marveled, forgetting her grass, at whose song the lynxes stood stunned, and the rivers changed and stopped their courses — the Muse of Damon and Alphesiboeus I will sing. You, whether you are already passing the rocks of the great Timavus or skirting the coast of the Illyrian sea — will that day ever come when I may tell of your deeds? Will it ever come that I may carry through the whole world your songs, the only ones worthy of Sophocles' buskin? From you is my beginning; in you I will end. Accept these songs, begun at your command, and let this ivy creep around your temples among the victor's laurels. The cold shadow of night had barely left the sky, at the hour when the dew on the tender grass is sweetest to the flock, when Damon, leaning on his smooth olive staff, began: "Rise, Morning Star, and, coming before it, bring on the kindly day, while I, deceived by an unworthy love for my bride Nysa, lament, and though I have gained nothing by calling the gods to witness, still, dying, I speak to them in my last hour.
21| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
22| Maenalus always has a rustling grove and talking pines; it always hears the loves of shepherds, and Pan, who first would not let reeds lie idle.
25| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
26| Nysa is given to Mopsus: what may we lovers not expect? Griffins will now be mated with mares, and in the age to come timid does will come with dogs to drink.
29| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
30| Mopsus, cut new torches: a wife is being brought home for you. Scatter nuts, bridegroom: for you the Evening Star is leaving Oeta.
31| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
32| You are joined to a worthy husband, you who look down on everyone, who hate my pipe, my goats, my shaggy eyebrows and long beard, and do not believe that any god cares about the affairs of mortals!
36| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
37| I saw you, a little girl, in our orchard, picking dewy apples with your mother — I was your guide. I had just reached the year after my eleventh; I could just touch the brittle branches from the ground. When I saw you, how I was lost, how a fatal madness carried me away!
42| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
43| Now I know what Love is: Tmaros or Rhodope or the furthest Garamantes bear him on hard crags, a child neither of our race nor of our blood.
46| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
47| Savage Love taught a mother to stain her hands with her children's blood; you too were cruel, mother. Was the mother more cruel, or that boy more wicked? That boy was wicked; you too were cruel, mother.
51| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
52| Now let the wolf even run away from the sheep of his own accord; let hard oaks bear golden apples, let the alder bloom with narcissus, let tamarisks sweat rich amber from their bark; let owls compete with swans, let Tityrus be an Orpheus, an Orpheus in the woods, an Arion among the dolphins.
57| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
58| Let everything even become the open sea. Farewell, woods: I will throw myself headlong from the lookout of the high mountain into the waves; take this as the last gift of a dying man.
61| Stop, my pipe, stop now the songs of Maenalus."
62| So Damon sang. You, Pierian Muses, tell how Alphesiboeus answered: we cannot all do everything. "Bring out water, wreathe these altars with a soft ribbon, and burn rich vervain and male frankincense, so that I may try to turn my husband's sane mind with magic rites: nothing is missing here but the spells.
68| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
69| Spells can even draw the moon down from the sky; with spells Circe transformed the companions of Ulysses; by chanting, the cold snake in the meadows is burst apart.
72| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
73| First I wind around you these three threads, each of three different colors, and three times I lead your image around these altars: the god delights in an odd number.
76| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
77| Tie the three colors, Amaryllis, in three knots; just tie them, Amaryllis, and say: 'I tie the bonds of Venus.'
79| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
80| As this clay hardens and as this wax melts in one and the same fire, so may Daphnis by my love. Sprinkle the meal and set the brittle laurels ablaze with pitch. Cruel Daphnis burns me; I burn this laurel against Daphnis.
84| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
85| May such love take hold of Daphnis as when a heifer, weary from searching for a bullock through the woods and the high groves, sinks down, lost, in the green sedge by a stream of water, and does not remember to make way for the late night — may such love hold him, and let me have no care to cure it. Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
91| These clothes that faithless man once left me, dear pledges of himself; now I entrust them to you, earth, on the very threshold: these pledges owe me Daphnis.
94| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
95| These herbs and these poisons, gathered in Pontus, Moeris himself gave me — they grow in great numbers in Pontus. With these I have often seen Moeris turn into a wolf and hide in the woods, often call up spirits from the depths of their tombs, and move sown crops to another field.
100| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
101| Carry the ashes outside, Amaryllis, and throw them over your head into the running stream, and do not look back. With these I will attack Daphnis; he cares nothing for gods, nothing for spells.
104| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
105| Look: while I delay in carrying it out, the ash itself has caught the altar in flickering flames of its own accord. May it be a good sign! There is certainly something — and Hylax is barking on the threshold. Do we believe it? Or do lovers make up their own dreams?
109| Stop, spells, stop now: Daphnis is coming from the city."
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/vergil/024-eclogues-eclogue-viii#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.