Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/13

ll. 20–72.] reply to my prayer: Pasture your oxen as of old, my children, rear your bulls.

M.—Happy in thine old age! so thy fields will remain thine, and ample enough for thee, although all the pastures be covered with bare stone or muddy rush of the fen. No strange fodder will try the breeding ewes, or touch of evil hurt them from any neighbour's flock. Happy in thine old age! here, amid familiar streams and holy springs thou wilt woo the coolness of the shade: here the hedge that ever keeps thy neighbour's boundary, where bees of Hybla feed their fill on the willow-blossom, shall often with light murmuring lull thee into sleep: here under the lofty rock shall rise the leaf-gatherer's song: nor all the while shall the hoarse wood-pigeons, thy delight, or the turtle on the elm's aery top cease to moan.

T.—Therefore sooner shall light stags feed in the sky and the sea-channels leave the fishes naked on the beach; sooner, over-wandering both their boundaries, shall the exiled Parthian drink of Arar, or Germany of Tigris, than his countenance shall fade from our heart.

M.—But we! some shall pass hence to thirsty Africa, some reach Scythia and the swift Cretan Oaxes, and the Britons wholly sundered from all the world. Lo, shall I ever, long in time to come, again in my native borders marvel as I see my realm sunk to a poor cabin with turf-heaped roof behind a handful of corn? Shall a lawless soldier possess these trim fallows? a barbarian these cornfields? lo, to what wretched pass has civil discord