Gallus, Eclogue X

Sicilian nymph. assist my mournful strains; The last I sing in rural notes to swains: Grant then a verse so tender and so true, As even Lycoris may with pity view: Who can deny a verse to grief and Gallus due? So, when thy waters pass beneath the tide, Secure from briny mixture may they glide! Begin my Gallus' love and hapless vows; While on the tender twigs the cattle browze: Nothing is deaf; woods listen while we sing, And echoing groves resound, and mountains ring. Ye Naiades, what held you from his aid, When to unpitied flames he was betray'd? Nor Aganippe tempted you away, Nor was Parnassus guilty of your stay: The bays, whose honours he so long had kept, The lofty bays and humble herbage wept. When, stretch'd beneath a rock, he sigh'd alone, The mountain pines and Maenalus did groan, And cold Lycaeus wept from every stone. His flock surrounded him: nor think thy fame Impair'd, great poet! by a shepherd's name; Ere thou and I our sheep to pastures led, His flocks the Goddess-lov'd Adonis fed. The shepherds came; the sluggish neat-herd swains, And swine-herds reeking from their mast and grains. All ask'd, from whence this frenzy? Phoebus came To see his poet, Phoebus ask'd the same: And is (he cry'd) that cruel nymph thy care, Who, flying thee, can for thy rival dare The frosts and snow, and all the frightful forms of war? Sylvanus came, thy fortune to deplore; A wreath of lilies on his head he wore. Pan came, and wondering we beheld him too, His skin all dy'd of a vermilion hue: He cry'd, What mad designs dost thou pursue? Nor satisfy'd with dew the grass appears, With browze the kids, nor cruel love with tears, When thus (and sorrow melted in his eyes) Gallus to his Arcadian friends replies: Ye gentle swains, sing to the rocks my moan (For you, Arcadian swains, should sing alone): How calm a rest my wearied ghost would have, If you adorn'd my love, and mourn'd my grave! O that your birth and business had been mine, To feed a flock, or press the swelling vine! Had Phyllis or had Galatea been My love, or any maid upon the green, (What if her face the nut-brown livery wear, Are violets not sweet, because not fair?) Secure in that unenvied state, among The poplars, I my careless limbs had flung; Phyllis had made me wreaths, and Galatea sung. Behold, fair nymph what bliss the country yields, The flowery meads, the purling streams, the laughing fields. Next, all the pleasures of the forest see, Where I could melt away my years with thee. But furious Love denies me soft repose, And hurls me on the pointed spears of foes. While thou (but ah! that I should find it so!) Without thy Gallus for thy guide dost go Through all the German colds and Alpine snow. Yet, flying me, no hardship may'st thou meet; Nor snow nor ice offend those tender feet. But let me run to desarts, and rehearse On my Sicilian reeds Euphorion's verse: Ev'n in the dens of monsters let me lie; Those I can tame, but not your cruelty. On smoothest rinds of trees I'll carve my woe; And as the rinds increase, the love shall grow. Then, mixt with nymphs, on Maenalus resort; I'll make the boar my danger and my sport. When from the vales the jolly cry resounds, What rain or cold shall keep me from my hounds? Methinks my ears the sprightly concert fills; I seem to bound through woods and mount o'er hills. My arm of a Cydonian javelin seiz'd, As if by this my madness could be eas'd; Or, by our mortal woes, the cruel God appeas'd: My frenzy changes now; and nymphs and verse I hate, And woods; for ah, what toil can stubborn love abate! Should we to drink the frozen Hebrus go, And shiver in the cold Sithonian snow, Or to the swarthy Ethiops clime remove, Parch'd all below, and burning all above, Ev'n there would Love o'ercome; then let us yield to Love. Let this sad lay suffice, by sorrow breath'd, While bending twigs I into baskets wreath'd: My rural numbers, in their homely guise, Gallus, because they came from me, will prize: Gallus, whose growing love my breast does rend, As shooting trees the bursting bark distend. Now rise, for night and dew the fields invade; And juniper is an unwholsome shade: Blasts kill the corn by night, and flowers with mildew fade. Bright Hesper twinkles from afar; away My kids, for you have had a feast to-day.