si quis mea vota deorum audiat, huic soli, virides qua gemmeus undas fons agit et tremulo percurrit lilia rivo inter pampineas ponetur faginus ulmos;
If any of the gods hear my prayer, to his honour, and his alone, shall his beechwood statue be planted amid my vine-clad elms, where the jewelled stream rolls its green wave and with rippling water runs through the lilies.
or, in the pleasant description of the return of spring (v. 16),
vere novo, cum iam tinnire volueres incipient nidosque reversa lutabit hirundo, protinus hiberno pecus omne movebis ovili. tune etenim melior vernanti germine silva pullat et aestivas reparabilis incohat umbras, tune florent saltus viridisque renascitur annus,[383]
When spring is young and the birds begin to pipe once more, and the swallow returns to plaster its nest anew, then move all your flock from its winter fold. For then the wood sprouts in fresh glory with its spring shoots and builds anew the shades of summer, then all the glades are bright with flowers and the green year is born again.
we seem to catch a glimpse of the real countryside; but for the most part Calpurnius paints little save theatrical and maniéré miniatures. Of such a character is the clever and not unpleasing description of the tame stag in the sixth eclogue (30). He shows a pretty fancy and no more.
The metre is like the language, easy, graceful, and correct. But the pauses are poorly managed; the rhythm is unduly dactylic; the verse trips all too lightly and becomes monotonous.
The total impression that we receive from these poems is one of insignificance and triviality. The style is perhaps less rhetorical and obscure than that of most writers of the age; as a result, these poems lack what is often the one saving grace of Silver Latin poetry, its extreme cleverness. To find verse as dull and uninspired, we must turn to Silius Italicus or the Aetna.
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The two short poems contained in a MS. at Einsiedeln and distinguished by the name of their place of provenance are also productions of the Neronian age. The first, in the course of a contest of song between Thamyras and Ladas, with a third shepherd, Midas, as arbiter, sets forth the surpassing skill of Nero as a performer on the cithara.[384] The second celebrates the return of the Golden Age to the world now under the beneficent guidance of Nero. Neither poem possesses the slightest literary importance; both are polished but utterly insipid examples of foolish court flattery. The author is unknown. An ingenious suggestion[385] has been made that he is no other than Calpurnius Piso, the supposed Meliboeus of Calpurnius Siculus. The second of these eclogues begins, 'Quid tacitus, Mystes?' The fourth eclogue of Calpurnius Siculus begins (Meliboeus loquitur), 'Quid tacitus, Corydon?' Is Meliboeus speaking in person and quoting his own poem? It may be so, but the evidence is obviously not such as to permit any feeling of certainty.