Virgil · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| Grant me this last task, Arethusa: I must sing a few songs for my Gallus, but songs Lycoris herself may read. Who would deny Gallus songs? So, when you glide beneath the Sicilian waves, may bitter Doris not mix her water with yours. Begin: let us tell of the troubled loves of Gallus, while the snub-nosed goats nibble the tender shrubs. We do not sing to the deaf: the woods answer everything. What groves, what glades held you, Naiad girls, when Gallus was dying of an unworthy love? For neither the ridges of Parnassus nor any of Pindus held you back, nor Aonian Aganippe. Even the laurels wept for him, even the tamarisks; pine-covered Maenalus and the rocks of cold Lycaeus wept for him as he lay beneath a lonely cliff. The sheep stand around him too — they are not ashamed of us, and you, divine poet, should not be ashamed of the flock: lovely Adonis too grazed sheep by the rivers. The shepherd came too; the slow swineherds came; Menalcas came, wet from gathering winter acorns.
21| All ask: "Where does this love of yours come from?" Apollo came: "Gallus, why this madness?" he said. "Your darling Lycoris has gone after another man through the snows and the rough camps." Silvanus came too, his head crowned with rustic honors, shaking flowering fennel stalks and tall lilies. Pan came, god of Arcadia, whom we ourselves saw, red with blood-red elderberries and vermilion. "Will there be no end?" he said. "Love does not care about such things: cruel Love is never sated with tears, nor grass with streams, nor bees with clover, nor goats with leaves." But Gallus, in sorrow, said: "Still, Arcadians, you will sing of this to your mountains, you Arcadians, the only ones skilled in song. Oh, how softly my bones would rest then, if one day your pipe were to tell of my love! And if only I had been one of you, a keeper of your flock or a vine-dresser of your ripe grapes! Surely, whether it were Phyllis or Amyntas or whoever my passion was — and what if Amyntas is dark? Violets are dark, and hyacinths are dark — they would lie with me among the willows under the pliant vine:
41| Phyllis would pick garlands for me, Amyntas would sing. Here are cool springs, Lycoris, here soft meadows, here woodland; here, with you, I would be worn away by the years themselves. But now mad love keeps me under the arms of harsh Mars, in the midst of weapons and facing the enemy. You, far from home — if only I did not have to believe it — you look, alone, without me, ah, hard-hearted one, at the Alpine snows and the frosts of the Rhine. Ah, may the frosts not hurt you! Ah, may the sharp ice not cut your tender feet! I will go and play on the Sicilian shepherd's pipe the songs I composed in Chalcidian verse. My mind is made up: I would rather suffer in the woods among the dens of wild beasts and carve my love on young trees: they will grow, and you, my loves, will grow with them. Meanwhile I will roam Maenalus with the Nymphs, or hunt fierce boars; no frosts will stop me ringing the glades of Parthenius with hounds. Already I seem to be going over rocks and through echoing groves; I long to shoot Cretan arrows from a Parthian bow — as if this could cure my madness, or that god could learn to soften at the sufferings of men!
62| Now neither the Hamadryads nor even songs please me any more; once more, woods, go away. No efforts of ours can change him, not if we were to drink the Hebrus in the middle of the frosts and endure the Sithonian snows of rainy winter, not if, when the bark is dying and drying on the tall elm, we drove the sheep of the Ethiopians under the star of the Crab. Love conquers all: let us too give way to Love." This will be enough, goddesses, for your poet to have sung while he sits and weaves a little basket of slender mallow, Pierian Muses: you will make it of the highest worth for Gallus, Gallus, for whom my love increases hour by hour as much as the green alder shoots up in early spring. Let us get up: the shade is often harmful to singers, the juniper's shade is harmful; shade hurts the crops too. Go home, you have had your fill, the Evening Star is coming, go home, my goats.
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