Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/43

ll. 1–55.] and vermilion. Shall there be a limit? he said: Love recks not aught of this. Neither is cruel Love satiated with tears, nor the grasses with the rills, nor bees with cytisus, nor she-goats with leafage. But sadly he: Yet you will be singing, O Arcadians, to your hills of this: alone Arcadians are skilled to sing. Ah how softly then may my ashes rest, if your pipe once may tell of my loves. And would God I had been one of you, and yours been the flock I kept or the ripe grapes of my vintage! surely Phyllis, were it so, or Amyntas or whosoever were my passion (what then, if Amyntas be swarthy? violets too are dark and dark are hyacinths) would lie with me among the osiers beneath a trailing vine: Phyllis would pluck me coronals, Amyntas would sing. Here are chill springs, here soft meadows, O Lycoris: here the woodland: here with wasting time I too at thy side would waste away. Now a mad passion holds thee down among the hard War-god's arms, encircled by weapons and confronting foes. Thou, far from home (let me not quite believe it!) alone, without me, ah cruel, lookest on Alpine snows and the frosts of the Rhine. Ah may the frosts not hurt thee! Ah may the rough ice not cut thy delicate feet! I will be gone, and the songs I fashioned in Chalcidian verse I will set to the Sicilian shepherd's reed: resolved in the woods among the wild beasts' dens, to embrace endurance, and to cut my loves on the tender trees; with, their growth you, O loves, will grow. Meanwhile I will range Maenalus amid the rout of Nymphs,