Book One: Elicio and Erastro

To the Curious Readers

The occupation of writing eclogues, in a time when poetry is so little in favour, will not, I fear, be thought a very praiseworthy exercise; and yet I have never found that the honour of poetry suffers by being used in lowly matters. I know well what is said against pastoral books — that the shepherds in them speak at times in a style too high for shepherds, and argue of love like philosophers. To this I answer that many of those who go about here in shepherds' dress are shepherds only in their dress, and that I have mingled philosophical reasons with amorous ones, as the matter demanded. I have always been fond of poetry; and I present this first fruit of my small talent, timidly, to readers who I hope will judge it, if not with praise, at least without much rigour.

Book One

Down from the high mountains to the green banks of the Tagus came the enamoured Elicio, with his flock, on a summer morning; and, seating himself beside the stream, he sang of his love for the fair shepherdess Galatea, whom he loved more than his own soul, and who neither scorned nor favoured him, but kept her heart free. Elicio was a shepherd of good understanding and gentle birth; and his song was of the joy and pain of loving one so beautiful and so wise.

As he finished, Erastro came along the bank with his goats and his dogs. Erastro was a herdsman of plain wit and rustic speech, but of a good heart; and he too loved Galatea. And this is the wonder of their story: that the two rivals, instead of hating each other, loved each other as friends, and agreed that their rivalry should never harm their friendship, since neither had any hope that the other did not share. Erastro sang too, in his homely fashion, of Galatea's beauty, and of the pains that her absence caused him; and Elicio listened kindly.

While they sat singing, they heard a noise in a thicket, and saw a shepherd come running out, pursued by another; and the first, turning on his pursuer, plunged a dagger into him and killed him before their eyes, crying: "Take, traitor, the reward of your treachery!" The dying man was Carino; the slayer, Lisandro. Lisandro cursed the corpse and forbade them to give it burial; but the shepherds buried it nonetheless, as Christian charity required. That night Elicio heard Lisandro lamenting in the woods, and thinking of taking his own life; and Elicio went to him, and asked him to tell his story.

Lisandro told it. He and Leonida were of the same village, but of families that were at enmity with each other; and they loved each other in secret. Silvia, Leonida's friend, carried their letters. Carino, a kinsman of Silvia and a friend of Crisalvo, Leonida's brother, was a false and envious man; and Crisalvo, a violent man, hated Lisandro, and had himself loved Silvia, who scorned him. Carino told Crisalvo that Lisandro was to marry Silvia secretly, and arranged an ambush. On the very night when Leonida was to set out to meet Lisandro for their secret wedding, escorted by a shepherd called Libeo, Crisalvo and four companions fell upon them in the dark, thinking they were Silvia and Lisandro, and killed them both. Lisandro, coming to the place, found Leonida dying; she knew him, and died in his arms. He went that same night and killed Crisalvo, and put the dagger in Leonida's hand, as if she had avenged herself. Then he had searched six months for Carino, and that morning had found him and killed him. Elicio begged him to stay in their village, to find some rest from his sorrows; but Lisandro, after one more day, went away.

Meanwhile Galatea and her friend Florisa, walking by the stream, heard a sad voice singing, and found a shepherdess sitting by the water, weeping: Teolinda, a shepherdess from another village. She began to tell them her story. In her village there had come, for a festival, a young shepherd of great grace and skill, called Artidoro; he won all the prizes in the games, and sang more sweetly than anyone; and Teolinda loved him from the first, and he her; and they met and spoke of love in the fields. But Teolinda had a sister, Leonarda, so like her that even their own parents could hardly tell them apart.

At this point in her story they were interrupted: a hare came running past, pursued by hounds, and behind it an old man hunting with some shepherds — Aurelio, the venerable father of Galatea; and Teolinda's tale had to wait.