DAPHNIS ECLOGUE.

If any signs were given to me, the surface of the sea must be plowed tomorrow.
Until now, the mercy of Jupiter has held back the games,
And the ether, painted with so many animals all around.
Those monsters which we marvel at in the glassy deep,
The radiant ether also carries: the faces and forms of swimming creatures.
The Crab The constellation Cancer is there, and the dolphin; there is the whale with its massive body.
Toward the North are the fishes, and you may behold beneath the South
The Fishes The constellation Pisces; where they are said to have recently increased in number.
There is the Urn Aquarius, and the River Eridanus, and the keel adorned with its stern-ornament The constellation Argo Navis.
Indeed, there are many likenesses of your own work there,
And lights in the heaven owing their names to the flock.
There are the kids and the little sows The Hyades, from the Greek 'hyes' meaning swine, and the mother goat.
And the path which shines white with widely scattered milk The Milky Way.
Guarding the entrance, shining with tawny fleece,
Is the leader Aries, and the huge Bull with gilded horns.
Two dogs are perceived, and the night-watching herdsman Boötes;
And the wagons The Great and Little Dipper; and the charioteer who was shaken from his own reins.
The winged horse Pegasus of the stars flies through the void:
And near their own manger, the little donkeys are stabled.
There is the Virgin, her hand made famous by the ear of grain belonging to Ceres The star Spica in Virgo,
And, his face transformed, Pan himself shines back;
Loving your Daphnis, in the shadow of a secret cliff,
Just as Urania The Muse of Astronomy taught him: and Daphnis taught me each detail.
Each detail which (since you demand a song) I shall reveal in order.
Immediately he tries his voice: and weighing the rhythms and melodies,
He soothes the breezes with various harmonies.
Then the winds subsided. The sea lies without waves;
And silence was made on the lands, and silence was made on the deep.
Soon he speaks: "That it may prosper, I shall begin from great Jove:
Prophets have been accustomed to begin from Jove.
You all—for no brief order of things is being born for me here—
Ward off the nocturnal cold from your bodies with a dance."
Then he celebrates the cradle of great Jupiter, and the cruel command
Of ancient Saturn, and the trickery of Cybele;
And the Corybantian rites Ecstatic rituals performed by the protectors of the infant Zeus risen from the hiding places of Dicte:
How a wife was chosen as a nurse for the boy from a fragrant husband The goat Amalthea, mate of a ram or goat;
And she herself, having recently given birth to twin kids;
Accompanied by whom, she now frequents the sky as a bright star,
The beast who previously bleated in the Olenian fields;
And treads the threshold of beautiful Olympus beneath her feet.