Dancing girl of Syria, her hair caught up with a fillet:
Very subtle
in swaying those quivering flanks of hers
In time to
the castanet's rattle: half-drunk in the smoky tavern,
She dances,
lascivious, wanton, clashing the rhythm.
And what's
the use, if you're tired, of being out in the dust and the heat,
When you
might as well lie still and get drunk on your settle?
Here's
tankards and cups and measures and roses and pipes and fiddles
And a
trellis-arbour cool with its shade of reeds,
And
somewhere somebody piping as if it were Pan's own grotto,
On a
shepherd's flute, the way they do in the fields.
And here's
a thin little wine, just poured from a cask that is pitchy,
And a brook
running by with the noise and gurgle of running water.
There's
even garlands for you, violet wreaths and saffron,
And golden
melilot twining with crimson roses,
And lilies
plucked where they grow by the virgin river,
—Achelois
brings them in green willow baskets
And little
cheeses for you that they dry in baskets of rushes,
And plums
that ripen in the autumn weather,
And
chestnuts, and the cheerful red of apples.
In brief,
here's Ceres, Love, and rowdy Bacchus
—And
red-stained blackberries, and grapes in bunches,
And hanging
from his withe seagreen cucumber.
And here's
the little god who keeps the arbour,
Fierce with
his sickle and enormous belly.
—Appendix Vergiliana*
*Often
spuriously attributed to Virgil. This
translation can be found in Mediæval Latin Lyrics by Helen Waddell.( Maram )
