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ECLOGUE 10. GALLUS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Oh arethus, let this last task be mine
Last Line: Of morning breaks -- go home, my full-fed sheep.
Alternate Author Name(s): Virgil; Vergil


GALLUS

OH Arethuse, let this last task be mine!
One song -- a song Lycoris' self may read --
My Gallus asks: who'd grudge one song to him?
So, when thou slid'st beneath Sicilian seas,
May ne'er salt Doris mix her stream with thine:
Begin: and sing -- while yon blunt muzzles search
The underwood -- of Gallus torn by love.
We lack not audience: woods take up the notes.
Where were ye, Naiad nymphs, in grove or glen,
When Gallus died of unrequited love?
Not heights of Pindus or Parnassus, no
Aonian Aganippe kept ye then.
Him e'en the laurels wept and myrtle-groves.
Stretch'd 'neath the lone cliff, piny Maenalus
And chill Lycaeum's stones all wept for him.
The sheep stood round. They think not scorn of us;
And think not scorn, O priest of song, of them.
Sheep fair Adonis fed beside the brooks.
The shepherds came. The lazy herdsmen came.
Came, from the winter acorns dripping-wet,
Menalcas. "Whence," all ask, "this love of thine?"
Apollo came: and, "Art thou mad," he saith,
"Gallus? Thy love, through bristling camps and snows,
Tracks now another's steps." Silvanus came,
Crowned with his woodland glories: to and fro
Rocked the great lilies and the fennel bloom.
Pan came, Arcadia's Pan: (I have seen him, red
With elder-berries and with cinnabar:)
"Is there no end?" quoth he: "Love heeds not this:
Tears sate not cruel Love: nor rills the leas,
Nor the bees clover, nor green boughs the goat."
But he rejoins sad-faced: "Yet sing this song
Upon your hills, Arcadians! none but ye
Can sing. Oh! pleasantly will rest my bones,
If pipe of yours shall one day tell my loves.
Oh! had I been as you are! kept your flocks,
Or gleaned, a vintager, your mellow grapes!
A Phyllis, an Amyntas -- whom you will --
Had been my passion -- what if he be dark?
Violets are dark and hyacinths are dark. --
And now should we be sitting side by side,
Willows around us and a vine o'erhead,
He carolling, or plucking garlands she.
-- Here are cold springs, Lycoris, and soft lawns,
And woods: with thee I'd here decay and die.
Now, for grim war accoutred, all for love,
In the fray's centre I await the foe:
Thou, in a far land -- out the very thought! --
Gazest (ah wilful!) upon Alpine snows
And the froz'n Rhine -- without me -- all alone!
May that frost harm not thee! that jagged ice
Cut ne'er thy dainty feet! I'll go, and play
My stores of music -- fashioned for the lyre
Of Chalcis -- on the pipe of Arcady.
My choice is made. In woods, 'mid wild beasts' dens,
I'll bear my love, and carve it on the trees:
That with their growth, my loves may grow and grow.
Banded with nymphs I'll roam o'er Maenalus,
Or hunt swift boars; and circle with my dogs,
Unrecking of the cold, Parthenia's glades.
Already over crag and ringing grove
I am borne in fancy: laugh as I let loose
The Cretan arrow from the Parthian bow: --

Pooh! will this heal thy madness? will that god
Learn mercy from the agonies of men?
'Tis past: again nymphs, music, fail to please.
Again I bid the very woods begone.
No deed of mine can change him: tho' I drink
Hebrus in mid December: tho' I plunge
In snows of Thrace, the dripping winter's snows:
Tho', when the parched bark dies on the tall elm,
'Neath Cancer's star I tend the AEthiop's sheep.
Love's lord of all. Let me too yield to Love.

-- Sung are, oh holy ones, your minstrel's songs:
Who sits here framing pipes with slender reed.
In Gallus' eyes will ye enhance their worth:
Gallus -- for whom each hour my passion grows,
As swell green alders when the spring is young.
I rise. The shadows are the singer's bane:
Baneful the shadow of the juniper.
E'en the flocks like not shadow. Go -- the star
Of morning breaks -- go home, my full-fed sheep.





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