1Tityrus, you, lying back beneath the cover of a spreading beech, practise the woodland Muse on a slender reed; 3we are leaving the borders of our homeland and our sweet fields: we are fleeing our homeland; 4you, Tityrus, at ease in the shade, teach the woods to echo the name of lovely Amaryllis. 6O Meliboeus, a god has made this leisure for us: for he will always be a god to me; 7a tender lamb from our folds will often stain his altar. 9He has allowed my cattle to wander, as you see, and me myself to play what I wished on a rustic reed. I do not begrudge it, indeed; 11rather I wonder: there is such turmoil everywhere throughout the countryside.
12Look, I myself, sick at heart, am driving my she-goats onwards; 13this one too, Tityrus, I can scarcely lead: for just now, here among the thick hazels, she bore twins, the hope of the flock, and left them, ah, on the bare flint. 16Often, I remember, oaks struck from the sky foretold this misfortune to us, had our minds not been perverse:— But still, Tityrus, tell us who this god of yours is. 20The city they call Rome, Meliboeus, I, fool that I was, thought was like this town of ours, to which we shepherds often drive down the tender young of our ewes: so I knew puppies were like dogs, so kids like their mothers, so I used to compare great things with small: but this city has raised its head as high among other cities as cypresses do among the pliant wayfaring-trees.
27And what was so great a reason for you to see Rome? 28Freedom; 28who, though late, still looked back on me in my idleness, after my beard was falling whiter under the razor; 30she looked back nonetheless, and came after a long time, now that Amaryllis has me and Galatea has left me: for, I will confess it, while Galatea held me, I had neither hope of freedom nor care for savings: though many a victim went out from my pens, and rich cheese was pressed for the ungrateful town, my right hand never came home to me heavy with bronze. 37I wondered why you called on the gods so sadly, Amaryllis, and for whom you let the apples hang on their tree: Tityrus was away from here.
39The very pines, Tityrus, the very springs, these very orchards were calling for you. 41What was I to do? 41I could not escape from slavery, nor find gods so ready to help elsewhere. 43here I saw that young man, Meliboeus, for whom our altars smoke twelve days every year; 45here he was the first to give me an answer when I asked: 'Pasture your cattle as before, boys; rear your bulls.' 47Fortunate old man, so your lands will remain yours, and large enough for you, though bare rock and marsh with muddy rushes cover all your pastures! 50No unfamiliar fodder will trouble your heavy pregnant ewes, nor will the evil contagions of a neighbour's flock harm them.
52Fortunate old man, here, among familiar rivers and sacred springs, you will seek the shady cool! 54on this side, as always, the hedge on your neighbour's boundary, its willow blossom fed on by Hyblaean bees, will often coax you with its gentle humming to fall asleep; 57on that side, beneath a high rock, the leaf-dresser will sing to the breezes; 58nor meanwhile will the hoarse wood-pigeons, your delight, nor the turtle-dove cease to moan from the lofty elm. 60Sooner, then, will nimble stags graze on the sea, and the waters leave fish stranded bare on the shore, sooner, each wandering in exile through the other's lands, will the Parthian drink the Arar or Germany the Tigris, than his face will slip from our heart.
65But we must go from here, some to the thirsty Africans, some of us to Scythia and to the Oaxes, swift with chalk from Crete, and to the Britons, wholly cut off from all the world. 68Ah, will I ever, after a long time, look on my ancestral lands and the roof of my poor cottage piled with turf, and later marvel at a few ears of corn, once my kingdom? 71Will an impious soldier possess these fallow fields so well tilled, a barbarian these crops? 72See where discord has brought our wretched citizens! 73For these men we have sown our fields! 74Graft your pear-trees now, Meliboeus, set your vines in rows.
75Go, my she-goats, once a happy flock, go. 76No more shall I, stretched out in a green cave, watch you hanging far off from a bushy crag; 78I shall sing no songs; 78you will not, my goats, with me to pasture you, crop the flowering clover and the bitter willows. 80Yet here you could have rested with me tonight on green leaves: we have ripe apples, soft chestnuts and plenty of pressed cheese; 83and already in the distance the rooftops of the farmhouses are smoking, and longer shadows are falling from the high mountains.