The Bucolics and Eclogues Part 4

These relics once, dear pledges of himself, The traitor left me, which, O earth, to thee Here on this very threshold I commit- Pledges that bind him to redeem the debt.

"Draw from the town, my songs, draw Daphnis home.

These herbs of bane to me did Moeris give, In Pontus culled, where baneful herbs abound.

With these full oft have I seen Moeris change To a wolf's form, and hide him in the woods, Oft summon spirits from the tomb's recess, And to new fields transport the standing corn.

"Draw from the town, my songs, draw Daphnis home.

Take ashes, Amaryllis, fetch them forth, And o'er your head into the running brook Fling them, nor look behind: with these will Upon the heart of Daphnis make essay.

Nothing for G.o.ds, nothing for songs cares he.

"Draw from the town, my songs, draw Daphnis home.

Look, look I the very embers of themselves Have caught the altar with a flickering flame, While I delay to fetch them: may the sign Prove lucky! something it must mean, for sure, And Hylax on the threshold 'gins to bark!

May we believe it, or are lovers still By their own fancies fooled?

Give o'er, my songs, Daphnis is coming from the town, give o'er."

ECLOGUE IX

LYCIDAS MOERIS

LYCIDAS Say whither, Moeris?- Make you for the town, Or on what errand bent?

MOERIS

O Lycidas, We have lived to see, what never yet we feared, An interloper own our little farm, And say, "Be off, you former husbandmen!

These fields are mine." Now, cowed and out of heart, Since Fortune turns the whole world upside down, We are taking him- ill luck go with the same!-'

These kids you see.

LYCIDAS

But surely I had heard That where the hills first draw from off the plain, And the high ridge with gentle slope descends, Down to the brook-side and the broken crests Of yonder veteran beeches, all the land Was by the songs of your Menalcas saved.

MOERIS Heard it you had, and so the rumour ran, But 'mid the clash of arms, my Lycidas, Our songs avail no more than, as 'tis said, Doves of Dodona when an eagle comes.

Nay, had I not, from hollow ilex-bole Warned by a raven on the left, cut short The rising feud, nor I, your Moeris here, No, nor Menalcas, were alive to-day.

LYCIDAS Alack! could any of so foul a crime Be guilty? Ah! how nearly, thyself, Reft was the solace that we had in thee, Menalcas! Who then of the Nymphs had sung, Or who with flowering herbs bestrewn the ground, And o'er the fountains drawn a leafy veil?- Who sung the stave I filched from you that day To Amaryllis wending, our hearts' joy?- "While I am gone, 'tis but a little way, Feed, t.i.tyrus, my goats, and, having fed, Drive to the drinking-pool, and, as you drive, Beware the he-goat; with his horn he b.u.t.ts."

MOERIS Ay, or to Varus that half-finished lay, "Varus, thy name, so still our Mantua live- Mantua to poor Cremona all too near- Shall singing swans bear upward to the stars."

LYCIDAS So may your swarms Cyrnean yew-trees shun, Your kine with cytisus their udders swell, Begin, if aught you have. The Muses made Me too a singer; I too have sung; the swains Call me a poet, but I believe them not: For naught of mine, or worthy Varius yet Or Cinna deem I, but account myself A cackling goose among melodious swans.

MOERIS 'Twas in my thought to do so, Lycidas; Even now was I revolving silently If this I could recall- no paltry song: "Come, Galatea, what pleasure is 't to play Amid the waves? Here glows the Spring, here earth Beside the streams pours forth a thousand flowers; Here the white poplar bends above the cave, And the lithe vine weaves shadowy covert: come, Leave the mad waves to beat upon the sh.o.r.e."

LYCIDAS What of the strain I heard you singing once On a clear night alone? the notes I still Remember, could I but recall the words.

MOERIS "Why, Daphnis, upward gazing, do you mark The ancient risings of the Signs? for look Where Dionean Caesar's star comes forth In heaven, to gladden all the fields with corn, And to the grape upon the sunny slopes Her colour bring! Now, the pears; So shall your children's children pluck their fruit.

Time carries all things, even our wits, away.

Oft, as a boy, I sang the sun to rest, But all those songs are from my memory fled, And even his voice is failing Moeris now; The wolves eyed Moeris first: but at your wish Menalcas will repeat them oft enow.

LYCIDAS Your pleas but linger out my heart's desire: Now all the deep is into silence hushed, And all the murmuring breezes sunk to sleep.

We are half-way thither, for Bianor's tomb Begins to show: here, Moeris, where the hinds Are lopping the thick leaf.a.ge, let us sing.

Set down the kids, yet shall we reach the town; Or, if we fear the night may gather rain Ere we arrive, then singing let us go, Our way to lighten; and, that we may thus Go singing, I will case you of this load.

MOERIS Cease, boy, and get we to the work in hand: We shall sing better when himself is come.

ECLOGUE X

GALLUS

This now, the very latest of my toils, Vouchsafe me, Arethusa! needs must I Sing a brief song to Gallus- brief, but yet Such as Lycoris' self may fitly read.

Who would not sing for Gallus? So, when thou Beneath Sicanian billows glidest on, May Doris blend no bitter wave with thine, Begin! The love of Gallus be our theme, And the shrewd pangs he suffered, while, hard by, The flat-nosed she-goats browse the tender brush.

We sing not to deaf ears; no word of ours But the woods echo it. What groves or lawns Held you, ye Dryad-maidens, when for love- Love all unworthy of a loss so dear- Gallus lay dying? for neither did the slopes Of Pindus or Parna.s.sus stay you then, No, nor Aonian Aganippe. Him Even the laurels and the tamarisks wept; For him, outstretched beneath a lonely rock, Wept pine-clad Maenalus, and the flinty crags Of cold Lycaeus. The sheep too stood around- Of us they feel no shame, poet divine; Nor of the flock be thou ashamed: even fair Adonis by the rivers fed his sheep- Came shepherd too, and swine-herd footing slow, And, from the winter-acorns dripping-wet Menalcas. All with one accord exclaim: "From whence this love of thine?" Apollo came; "Gallus, art mad?" he cried, "thy bosom's care Another love is following."Therewithal Silva.n.u.s came, with rural honours crowned; The flowering fennels and tall lilies shook Before him. Yea, and our own eyes beheld Pan, G.o.d of Arcady, with blood-red juice Of the elder-berry, and with vermilion, dyed.

"Wilt ever make an end?" quoth he, "behold Love recks not aught of it: his heart no more With tears is sated than with streams the gra.s.s, Bees with the cytisus, or goats with leaves."

"Yet will ye sing, Arcadians, of my woes Upon your mountains," sadly he replied- "Arcadians, that alone have skill to sing.

O then how softly would my ashes rest, If of my love, one day, your flutes should tell!

And would that I, of your own fellowship, Or dresser of the ripening grape had been, Or guardian of the flock! for surely then, Let Phyllis, or Amyntas, or who else, Bewitch me- what if swart Amyntas be?

Dark is the violet, dark the hyacinth- Among the willows, 'neath the limber vine, Reclining would my love have lain with me, Phyllis plucked garlands, or Amyntas sung.

Here are cool springs, soft mead and grove, Lycoris; Here might our lives with time have worn away.

But me mad love of the stern war-G.o.d holds Armed amid weapons and opposing foes.

Whilst thou- Ah! might I but believe it not!- Alone without me, and from home afar, Look'st upon Alpine snows and frozen Rhine.

Ah! may the frost not hurt thee, may the sharp And jagged ice not wound thy tender feet!

I will depart, re-tune the songs I framed In verse Chalcidian to the oaten reed Of the Sicilian swain. Resolved am I In the woods, rather, with wild beasts to couch, And bear my doom, and character my love Upon the tender tree-trunks: they will grow, And you, my love, grow with them. And meanwhile I with the Nymphs will haunt Mount Maenalus, Or hunt the keen wild boar. No frost so cold But I will hem with hounds thy forest-glades, Parthenius. Even now, methinks, I range O'er rocks, through echoing groves, and joy to launch Cydonian arrows from a Parthian bow.- As if my madness could find healing thus, Or that G.o.d soften at a mortal's grief!

Now neither Hamadryads, no, nor songs Delight me more: ye woods, away with you!

No pangs of ours can change him; not though we In the mid-frost should drink of Hebrus' stream, And in wet winters face Sithonian snows, Or, when the bark of the tall elm-tree bole Of drought is dying, should, under Cancer's Sign, In Aethiopian deserts drive our flocks.

Love conquers all things; yield we too to love!"

These songs, Pierian Maids, shall it suffice Your poet to have sung, the while he sat, And of slim mallow wove a basket fine: To Gallus ye will magnify their worth, Gallus, for whom my love grows hour by hour, As the green alder shoots in early Spring.

Come, let us rise: the shade is wont to be Baneful to singers; baneful is the shade Cast by the juniper, crops sicken too In shade. Now homeward, having fed your fill-- Eve's star is rising-go, my she-goats, go.