1Grant me this last labour, Arethusa: a few songs must be sung for my Gallus, but such as Lycoris herself may read. 3who would refuse songs to Gallus? 4So, when you glide beneath the Sicilian waves, may bitter Doris not mingle her water with yours. 6begin; 6let us tell of the troubled loves of Gallus, while the snub-nosed goats crop the tender shrubs. 8we do not sing to deaf ears; 8the woods answer everything. 9What groves, or what glades held you, Naiad maidens, when Gallus was dying of an unworthy love? 11for neither the ridges of Parnassus nor of Pindus delayed you, nor Aonian Aganippe. 13Even the laurels wept for him, even the tamarisks.
14Even pine-bearing Maenalus and the rocks of cold Lycaeus wept for him as he lay beneath a lonely crag. 16The sheep stand around too—they are not ashamed of us, nor should you be ashamed of the flock, divine poet—and lovely Adonis too fed sheep by the rivers; 19the shepherd came too; 19the slow swineherds came; 20Menalcas came, wet from gathering winter acorns. 21All ask, 'Where does this love of yours come from?' 21Apollo came: 'Gallus, why are you mad?' 22he says; 22'your darling Lycoris has followed another through snows and through rough camps.' 24Silvanus came too, with rustic honours on his head, shaking flowering fennel-stalks and tall lilies. 26Pan, god of Arcadia, came, whom we ourselves saw, ruddy with blood-red elderberries and vermilion.
28'Will there be no end?' 28he says; 28'Love cares nothing for such things; 29cruel Love is never sated with tears, nor the grass with streams, nor bees with clover, nor goats with leaves.' 31But he said sadly: 'Yet you will sing of this, Arcadians, to your mountains: Arcadians alone are skilled in song. 33O how softly then would my bones rest, if your pipe should one day tell of my loves! 35And would that I had been one of you, either keeper of your flock or gatherer of your ripe grapes! 37Surely, whether Phyllis were my love, or Amyntas, or whatever my passion—what then, if Amyntas is dark; 39violets too are dark, and hyacinths are dark—they would lie with me among the willows beneath the pliant vine; 41Phyllis would gather garlands for me, Amyntas would sing.
42Here are cool springs, here soft meadows, Lycoris, here a grove; 43here with you I would be worn away by time alone. 44Now mad love keeps me under the arms of harsh Mars, amid weapons and facing the enemy: you, far from your homeland (would that I need not believe it!), gaze, hard-hearted one, on Alpine snows and the frosts of the Rhine, alone, without me: ah, may the frosts not harm you! 49ah, may the sharp ice not cut your tender feet! 50I will go, and the songs I have composed in Chalcidian verse I will play on the pipe of the Sicilian shepherd. 52I am resolved to choose rather to suffer in the woods, among the dens of wild beasts, and to carve my loves on the tender trees; 54they will grow, and you, my loves, will grow with them.
55Meanwhile I will roam Maenalus with the nymphs in company, or hunt fierce boars: no frosts will stop me from ringing the Parthenian glades with hounds. 58already I seem to be going over crags and through echoing groves; 59I long to shoot Cydonian arrows from a Parthian bow:—as if this could be a cure for my madness, or that god could learn to soften at the woes of men! 62Now neither the Hamadryads nor songs themselves please me any longer; 63even you, woods, once more, farewell. 64no labours of ours can change him, not if we were to drink the Hebrus in the midst of frosts and endure the Sithonian snows of watery winter, not if, when the dying bark withers on the tall elm, we were to herd the sheep of the Ethiopians beneath the star of Cancer.
69Love conquers all; 69let us too yield to Love.' 70This will be enough, goddesses, for your poet to have sung, while he sits and weaves a basket of slender mallow, Pierian Muses; 72you will make these songs of greatest worth to Gallus—Gallus, for whom my love grows hour by hour as much as the green alder shoots up in early spring. 75Let us rise; 75the shade is often harmful to singers; 76the juniper's shade is harmful; 76shade harms the crops too. 77Go home, my full-fed goats, the Evening Star is coming, go.