Eclogue IX (by Virgil, translated by Seamus Heaney)
Lycidas: Where are you headed, Moeris? Into town?
Moeris: The things we have lived to see...The last thing
You could’ve imagined happening has happened.
An outsider lands and says he has the rights
To our bit of ground. “Out, old hands,” he says,
“This place is mine.” And these kid-goats in the creel—
Bad cess to him—these kids are his. All’s changed.
Lycidas: The story I heard was about Menalcas,
How your song-man’s singing saved the place,
Starting from where the hills go doubling back\
And the ridge keeps sloping gently to the water,
Right down to those old scraggy-headed beech trees.
Moeris: That’s what you would have heard. But songs and tunes
Can no more hold out against brute force than doves
When eagles swoop. The truth is, Lycidas,
If I hadn’t heard the crow caw on my left
In our hollow oak, I’d have kept on arguing
And that would’ve been the end of the road, for me
That’s talking to you, and for Menalcas even.
Lycidas: Shocking times. Our very music, our one consolation,
Confiscated, all but. And Menalcas himself
Nearly one of the missing. Who would there be to sing
Praise songs to the nymph? Who hymn the earth
To grow wild flowers and grass, and shade the wells
With overhanging green? Who sing the song
I listened by heart as you went warbling it,
Off to the Amaryllis we all love?
The one that goes, “O herd my goats for me,
Tityrus, till I come back. I won’t be long.
Graze them and then water them, and watch
The boyo with the horns doesn’t go for you.”
Moeris: And then there was that one he never finished.
Addressed to Varus, about a choir of swans
Chanting his name to the stars, “should Mantua
Survive, Mantua too close to sad Cremona.”
Lycidas: If you’ve any song to sing, then sing it now
So that your bees may swerve off past the yew trees,
Your cows in clover thrive with canted teats
And tightening udders. The Pierian Muses
Made me a poet too, I too have songs,
And people in the country calls me bard,
But I’m not sure: I have done nothing yet
That Varius or Cinna would take note of.
I’m a squawking goose among sweet-throated swans.
Moeris: I’m quiet because I’m trying to piece together
As best I can a song I think you’d know:
“Galatea,” it goes, “come here to me.
What’s in the sea and the waves that keeps you spellbound?
Here earth breaks out in wildflowers, she rills and rolls
The streams in waterweed, here poplars bend
Where the bank is undermined and vines in thickets
Are meshing shade with light. Come here to me.
Let the mad white horses paw and pound the shore.”
Lycidas: There was something I heard you singing by yourself
One night when the sky was clear. I have the air
So maybe I’ll get the words. “Daphnis, Daphnis, why
Do you concentrate your gaze on the old stars?
Look for the star of Caesar, rising now,
Star of corn in the fields and hay in haggards
Of clustered grapes gone purple in the heat
On hillsides facing south. Daphnis, now is the time
To plant the pear slips for your children’s children.”
Moeris: Age robs us of everything, of our very mind.
Many a time I remember as a boy
Serenading the slow sun down to rest,
But nowadays I’m forgetting song after song
And my voice is going: maybe the wolves have blinked it
But Menalcas will keep singing and keep the songs.
Lycidas: Come on, don’t make excuses, I want to hear you
And now’s your chance, now this hush has fallen
Everywhere—look—on the plain, and every breeze
Has calmed and quietened. We’ve come half-way.
Already you can see Bianor’s tomb
Just up ahead. Here where they’ve trimmed and faced
The old green hedge, here’s where we’re going to sing.
Set that creel and those kid-goats on the ground.
We’ll make it into town in all good time.
Or if it looks like rain when it’s getting dark,
Singing shortens the road, so we’ll walk and sing.
Walk then, Moeris, and sing. I’ll take the kids.
Moeris: That’s enough of that, my boy. We’ve a job to do.
When the real singer comes, we’ll sing in earnest.
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