One has to take care, among
wikipedia's pages on botany.
This great fount of inform-
ing eagerness, a treasure to
us all, faithfully reflects
assumptions kindled by cus-
tom, as much as learning ac-
quired more probingly. Now,
when we're plainly launched
upon a time of heightened
awareness of culture, is no
time to lower our guard for
its ornaments, botanical or
literary. Yes, wikipedia:
Virgil's Eclogues are the
source of the name given to
the flower, Amaryllis, one
of the mobile and repeated-
ly desired shepherd singers.
But, no. There is no basis
for designating Amaryllis,
female. Only misadventure,
sowing discord, against a
provenance of pure poetry:
the precise story of the
1st Eclogue. By chance?
Meliboeus
Here you will seek and find the cool of the shade
Beside your hallowed springs and the streams you know;
Often beside the hedge of willows that marks
This edge of what you own, the humming of bees
That visit the willow flowers will make you sleepy;
And over there, at the other edge of your land,
Under the ledge of that high outcropping of rock,
The song of a woodman pruning the trees can be heard;
And always you can hear your pigeons throating
And the moaning of the doves high in the elm tree.
Tityrus
Stags will browse in the pastures of the air
And the sea will cast up its fish on the naked shore,
The exiled Parthian drink from the river Saône
And the German drink from the Tigris, before that face,
The way he looked at me, will fade from my heart.
Virgil
Eclogues
David Ferry
translation
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999©
op. cit.
Xavier Buestel
Rory Payne, photograph
Belstaff, 2016©
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