Eclogues

MELIBOEUS You, Tityrus, ’neath a broad beech-canopy reclining, on the slender oat rehearse your silvan ditties: I from my sweet fields, and home’s familiar bounds, even now depart. Exiled from home am I; while, Tityrus, you sit careless in the shade, and, at your call, “Fair Amaryllis” bid the woods resound.

TITYRUS O Meliboeus, ’twas a god vouchsafed this ease to us, for him a god will I deem ever, and from my folds a tender lamb oft with its life-blood shall his altar stain. His gift it is that, as your eyes may see, my kine may roam at large, and I myself play on my shepherd’s pipe what songs I will.

MELIBOEUS I grudge you not the boon, but marvel more, such wide confusion fills the country-side. See, sick at heart I drive my she-goats on, and this one, O my Tityrus, scarce can lead: for ’mid the hazel-thicket here but now she dropped her new-yeaned twins on the bare flint, hope of the flock—an ill, I mind me well, which many a time, but for my blinded sense, the thunder-stricken oak foretold, oft too from hollow trunk the raven’s ominous cry. But who this god of yours? Come, Tityrus, tell.