Vergilius Maro, Publius; Maillol, Aristide: The eclogues of Vergil: in the original Latin with an English prose translation (London, 1927)

gone so badly, I am taking him these kids as a gift»
damn him!

LYCIDAS
But I had certainly heard that Menalcas had saved
all your farm for you by his poems, from the foot of
the hills, and where the ridge slopes down gently,
right away to the stream and the old beeches with
their tops now broken off*
MOERIS

You had heard, and so the story went; but our poems
are as much good among the bolts of Mars, as the
doves m the oak grove of Dodona when an eagle
comes swooping down* Why, had I not been warned
by an ominous crow on a hollow oak-tree by the
sinister side, that I was to break off at all costs this
new quarrel, neither your friend Moens here, nor
even Menalcas had lived to see this day*

LYCIDAS
Good heavens! Can there be such wickedness? Was
Menalcas, whose poetry I am always singing over
to console myself with, almost snatched away at that
same momenti Who then would sing poems to us
about the nymphs of the woodlands ? Or star the turf
with bright flowers, and picture the green-shadowed
stream? Or sing the songs I lately quietly learned
from you, when you went singing to meet our sweet
little Amaryllis? TITYRUS, TILL I RETURN, l*M
NOT GOING FAR, LOOK AFTER MY GOATS, AND
WHEN THEY ARE PASTURED, DRIVE THEM TO

8Z