10
Here are cool springs, soft mead and grove, Lycoris;
here might our lives with time have worn away.
55
But me mad love of the stern war-god holds
armed amid weapons and opposing foes.
Whilst thou—Ah! might I but believe it not!—
alone without me, and from home afar,
look'st upon Alpine snows and frozen Rhine.
60
Ah! may the frost not hurt thee, may the sharp
and jagged ice not wound thy tender feet!
I will depart, re-tune the songs I framed
in verse Chalcidian to the oaten reed
of the Sicilian swain. Resolved am I
65
in the woods, rather, with wild beasts to couch,
and bear my doom, and character my love
upon the tender tree-trunks: they will grow,
and you, my love, grow with them. And meanwhile
I with the Nymphs will haunt Mount Maenalus,
70
or hunt the keen wild boar. No frost so cold
but I will hem with hounds thy forest-glades,
parthenius. Even now, methinks, I range
