Publius Vergil Maro's
First Eclogue
in a dramatic recitation by Luke Amadeus Ranieri
(in the "Classical" or "Restored" Latin pronunciation)
Tityrus
You're relaxing under the canopy of a broad beech tree
humming to the woodland Muse on slender reed,
but we're fixing to leave town and our sweet fields.
We are outcasts from our lands;
you, Tityrus, not a care in the world in the shade,
are teaching the woods to re-echo your tune for lovely Amaryllis.
Howdy Melibeous, it's a god who gave us this peace
for a god he will always be to me;
often a tender lamb from our folds will stain his altar.
Thanks to him my cattle roam, as you reckon,
and I play what I will on my rustic pipe.
Well, I won't begrudge you that
but I am dumb-struck by it;
such unrest is there on all sides in the land.
See, heartsick, I myself am driving my goats along,
and here, Tityrus, is one I scarce can lead.
For here just now amid the thick hazels,
after hard trail, she dropped twins,
the hope of the flock,
on the naked flint.
Often, I do recall, this bad business was foretold me, had not my wits been dull,
by the oaks struck from heaven.
But still tell me, Tityrus, who is this god of yours?
The big city they call Rome, Meliboeus,
I, witless, thought it was like our local town,
to which we shepherds are wont to drive
the tender younglings of our flocks.
In like, I thought puppies were like dogs,
and kids like their mammas;
I reckon I used to confuse great things with small ones.
But this one had reared her head as high among all other cities
as cypresses will do among the bending osiers.
And what was the fuss about for seeing Rome?
Freedom, who, though late, cast her eyes upon me in my sloth,
when my beard began to whiten as it fell beneath the scissors.
Yet she did cast her eyes on me, and came after a long time
after Amaryllis began her sway and Galatea left me.
For, yes, I do confess,
while Galatea ruled me,
I had neither hope of freedom nor thought of savings.
Though many a victim left my stalls,
and many a rich cheese was pressed for the thankless town,
never would my hand come home with a heavy sum of gold
I used to wonder,
Amaryllis, why you called on the gods so sadly,
and for whom you let the apples hang on their native trees.
Tityrus was away from home.
The pines themselves, Tityrus,
the springs, the orchards were calling for you!
What was I gonna do?
I couldn't quit my slavery
nor elsewhere find my gods so readily to aid.
Here, Meliboeus, I saw the young man
for whom our altars smoke twice six days a year.
Here he was the first to give my plea an answer:
"Feed, your oxen like always, boys; rear your bulls."
Lucky old man!
So these lands will still be yours,
and large enough for you, though bare stones cover all,
and the marsh chokes your pastures with slimy rushes.
Still, no strange herbage will try your breeding ewes,
no baneful infection from a neighbor's flock shall harm them.
Lucky old man,
Here, among familiar streams
and sacred springs, you'll enjoy the cool shade.
On this side, like always,
on your neighbor's border,
the hedge whose willow blossoms are sipped
by Hybla's bees will often
with its gentle hum soothe you to slumber;
on that, under the towering rock,
the woodman's song will fill the air;
while still the cooing wood pigeons, your pets,
and the turtle dove won't ever cease
their moaning from the elm tops.
Sooner, then, will the nimble stag graze in air,
and the seas leave their fish bare on the strand
sooner, each wandering over the other's frontiers,
shall the Parthian in exile drink the Arar, and Germany the Tigris,
than that look of his will fade from my heart.
We have to skedaddle though
some are off to the thirsty Africans,
some to reach Scythia and the chalk-rolling Oaxes,
and the Britons, wholly sundered from the world.
Dang, will I ever, long years from now, look again on my country's borders,
on my humble cabin with its turf-clad roof
will I, long years from now, look amazed on a few ears of corn, once my kingdom?
A godless soldier is gonna get these well-tilled fallows
a barbarian these crops
See where strife has brought our unhappy citizens!
We have sown our fields for these folk!
Now, Meliboeus, graft your pears,
plant your vines in rows!
Git, you goats!
Git, once happy flock!
Never again, stretched out in some mossy grotto,
will I watch you in the distance hanging from a bushy crag;
I'm not gonna sing any more songs;
no more, my goats, under my tending,
will you nibbile flowering lucerne and bitter willows!
Yet this night you might have rested here with us
on the green grass.
We have ripe apples,
mealy chestnuts,
and a wealth of pressed cheeses.
Even now the housetops yonder are smoking
and longer shadows are falling from the high mountains.
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