Hyblaeum raptura thymum, cum cerea reges 125
castra movent fagique cava dimissus ab alvo
mellifer electis exercitus obstrepit herbis.
pratorum spoliatur honos: haec lilia fuscis
intexit violis; hanc mollis amaracus ornat;
haec graditur stellata rosis, haec alba ligustris. 130
te quoque, flebilibus maerens Hyacinthe figuris,
[125] Written into F by a later hand. Doubtless an interpolation and as such erased in C. It anticipates the saltus invasere cohors of 123.
streams bedewed their grassy banks. With the shade of its branches a wood tempers the sun’s fierce heat and at summer’s height makes for itself the cold of winter. There grows the pine, useful for seafaring, the cornel-tree for weapons of war, the oak, friendly to Jove, the cypress, sentinel of graves, the holm filled with honeycombs, and the laurel foreknowing of the future; here the box-tree waves its thick crown of leaves, here creeps the ivy, here the vine clothes the elm. Not far from here lies a lake called by the Sicani Pergus, girt with a cincture of leafy woods close around its pallid waters. Deep down therein the eye of whoso would can see, and the everywhere transparent water invites an untrammelled gaze into its oozy depths and betrays the uttermost secrets of its pellucid gulfs. [Hither came their company well pleased with the flowery climb.]