E L E G I A I.

If you are able to tear apart our peaceful elegies, Envy,

Spare them, and do not arm your hateful hands with gall.

But if you will not, you merely snap your jaws in vain, envious one,

And, though you mock, you do not make yourself feared.

We are not unfamiliar with hardships from before (nor do we regret it);

Often have we endured snows, often frost beneath the northern sky.

We have lived amidst both troubles and cruel swords,

When to craft a learned poem was the mark of an idler.

Ah, how often, as we sought meters fitting for our tears,

Have the dreadful trumpets drowned us out?

How often has a trembling hand left words unfinished,

When the war-horns, suddenly struck, blared their sound?

You too, as you look down upon the lands from the highest heaven,

You know this, constellations closest to the northern pole:

That beneath your stars, through a thousand perilous things,

We have endured dangerous journeys more than once.

The times have now robbed us of our knowledge of places:

Tell us, come, which way the path lies, if any friend is near.

When we secretly asked this, someone replied, "Depart:

Mars is even now laying waste to the land you seek."

Instantly the color drained from our faces, suffused with spots.

Ah, wretched are those whose battles have no end!

We regret, alas, too late that we burned with the desire for the light;

Whose help shall we wretched ones seek, or what road shall we take?

If you have the time, O glory and guardian of our poet,

Stretch out your gentle hands, learned Stibar.

And take us up, the offspring of your poet, if it is not a burden;

We light elegies are not a heavy Muse.

Nor look down upon us because, weary, we do not walk with equal feet;

You know what it means to undertake long journeys.

You too have seen the Loire, and the great Garonne,

And the glassy waters of the Rhone, which the Saône augments.

He who has borne many hardships through foreign shores

Can be more sympathetic to the weary.

Nor let it displease you to unroll complaining verses,

And to have groaned over the read misfortunes of our fatherland.

If you were to count them all, even a single day of this time

Has a thousand causes from which we might complain.

May the gods grant that shining peace revisit the fields and cities,

And that a limit come to slaughters and discord:

So that we may celebrate your praises with a better song,

And its sound may proceed fittingly with the times.

You from afar furnish secure leisure for our father,

Which he remembers is your gift.

Nor would he prefer to these whatever gems the East,

Or whatever the Indian gathers in gold-bearing waters.

Wealth which the Tagus, or the fortunate Hermus discharges,

Does not relieve breasts anxious with biting cares.

But the companion Muses, and whatever pleasure is his own,

Make a man everywhere forgetful of a harsh lot.

Therefore we shall bear your name aloft to the stars,

Nor will you complain that we are a disgrace to you.

Then green laurels with baccar will bind my temples,

And my appearance will be fitting, and my garment apt.

Now with a calm face nod to those seeking rest,

And permit us to be the work of your protection.

When this happens, it is enough: you lofty thresholds of kings,

Full of anxious fear, farewell.

You too, destitute of peace, and not yet to be approached beneath the Bear,

A land hospitable to us while it was permitted, farewell.

You ask whence the light Elegies come, or to whose ears

we bring this brief work, O mournful muse?

Having departed from the borders of the land that the Seine flows through,

we take our journey toward the Bear, untouched by the sea.

Thrice has the air grown hot with the glow of Erigone's Dog,

thrice have sickle-bearing hands reaped the harvest:

Since we were composed under the pole of the world neighboring Boreas,

amidst clarions and weapons.

Shut away, we never left private thresholds,

nor was it our lot to be known and read by the mouth of the people.

It used to please us to come among public monuments,

but both circumstance and place held back the journeys we had begun.

Often our father, in fear, said, "Why do you prepare to leave?

Will there be anyone to help you with hospitality when you are weary?"

A part of us also burned in merciless flames,

lest it be ruinous to its author.

He, however, overcome by our entreaties and by time,

said, "Go, mournful work, and may it turn out well.

But do not wear garments twice dyed with the Sidonian shell,

nor wear myrtle garlands in well-arranged hair.

Go without envy, and remember to use smaller sails;

a light breeze carries your yardarms."

We go, and we have a miserable name from the truth,

carried on unequal wheels, for the journey is long.