E L E G I A V.

And, impatient of a husband, she devotes herself to the chaste altars,

And the white fillet already binds her golden hair.

I saw when she exchanged her rosy garments for black,

And laid aside her tunic before the great gods.

And left her kindred girls along with her sweet mother,

Never to return home from the temple.

Wretched me, shall I be able to endure it, shall I be able to be healed?

I shall not be able; my sick mind is stunned by such great evils.

What have we not tried with spells, what not with herbs?

The power of herbs was useless, the spell was empty.

The father of bards himself, Bocchius, brought no help

With his sweet eloquence, nor did Amasaeus.

Farewell, Apennine, and you, O sweetest of things,

My companion, lighten these cares and my losses.

You too, whether you rejoice to be called Panarus by custom,

A river sprung from the airy peaks.

Or whether you more gladly hear yourself called the noble river Scultenna,

Or whatever name it pleases you to bear, Farewell.

As for the rest (since nothing is swifter than the years),

let youth rejoice, as is fitting, in its own bloom.

By your leave, may I put aside my mourning garments,

and restore myrtle garlands to my adorned hair.

Father Apennine, who lift into the empty air

your head wreathed with holm-oaks and junipers,

And, seeing the borders of Aemilia and the low-lying plains,

you look down upon the noble work of the city of Felsina.

You are the sharer of my cares, and the witness of my labors,

you preserve my joys upon your green ridge.

Here, my light spends her life in her native hills,

a fosterling of the countryside pasturing the wool-bearing flock.

She has ravished my senses and my mind, which all

the nymphs of the Euganean land could not do.

In the lonely woods I seek her footprints,

and, holding cities in less esteem, I inhabit the pleasing fields.

Tell me, guardians of the flock, holding the high groves,

does any girl keep a flock beneath this mountain?

Tell me, at what spring does she cool her weary limbs?

What woods, what caves does she enter at midday?

Thus I spoke; then the rustic youth points out the banks to me,

where the Panaro glides past the fields with liquid foot.

That river is pleasing to weary shepherds;

hither my light leads her sated sheep to drink.

Here she first brought her eyes to meet mine,

eyes which were rivals to the rays of the sun.

Why should I relate how often I spend the night in inhospitable places,

to see if she might be kind to my sorrows?

But she (ah, simple girl), hostile to human prayers,

prefers to be a maiden of the virginal choir.

A second summer, Rüger, comes around after winter,

and a second winter presses upon the back of summer:

since I wept for the premature death of my girl,

and the cold realms of an abandoned bed.

The Sorgue is my witness, and the Durance with its broad banks,

where each joins its course to the Rhone.

There I built a tomb, and called upon the spirits,

and sat before the sepulchre for many days.

And I promised loyalty to her ashes, that I would be without love

all the way to the final hour of my own death.

But now Love again awakens old fires for me,

again fierce Love burns me with a cruel torch.

Forgive me, blessed souls, and you, excellent maiden,

forgive me, and let not your shade invoke avenging Gods.

Whatever can happen that is acceptable and pleasing to the buried,

has all been granted to your funeral rites.