Idyll 20

Translated by Thothica

3 min

and mocking me she said these words: Get away from me.

A cowherd, and you want to kiss me, wretch? I have not learned

to kiss country fashion, but to press town-bred lips.

Do not kiss my fair mouth, not even in your dreams.

How you stare, what stuff you talk, how boorishly you play,

how daintily you wheedle, what coaxing words you say;

how soft a beard you have, how sweet a head of hair.

Your lips are diseased, and your hands are black,

and you smell foul. Away from me, lest you defile me.

So speaking she spat three times into her bosom,

and eyed me steadily from head to foot,

curling her lips and looking sidelong with her eyes,

and gave herself great airs of beauty, and grinning

scornfully she laughed at me. And straightway my blood boiled,

and my skin flushed red with pain, like a rose with the dew.

And she went off and left me; and I carry anger beneath my heart,

that the vile wench mocked me, the graceful one.

Shepherds, tell me the truth: am I not handsome?

Has some god of a sudden made me into another man?

For before this a sweet beauty bloomed on me

like ivy on a tree-trunk, and shaded my chin,

and my locks fell about my temples like wild celery,

and my white forehead shone above black brows;

my eyes were far brighter than gray-eyed Athena's,

and my mouth sweeter than curd, and from my mouth

flowed a voice sweeter than honey from the comb.

And sweet is my music, whether I make melody on the pipe,

or sound the flute, or the reed, or the cross-flute.

And all the women on the hills call me handsome,

and all of them kiss me; but the town girl did not kiss me,

but, because I am a cowherd, ran past and never listens,

though the fair Dionysus drove a heifer in the glens.

She did not know that Cypris went mad for a herdsman

and pastured cattle in the Phrygian hills, and loved Adonis

in the woodlands, and in the woodlands wept for him.

And who was Endymion? Was he not a cowherd? Whom the Moon

loved as he herded, and coming from Olympus

came secretly to the glade and slept beside the boy.

And you, Rhea, weep for your cowherd. And did not you too,

son of Cronos, for the sake of a herd-boy, wander as a bird?

But Eunica alone would not kiss the cowherd,

she who is greater than Cybele and Cypris and the Moon.

No more, then, Cypris, may you kiss your sweet one, either in the town

or on the hill, but sleep alone through the night.