DispuTED LINEs oN AMELLUS y At 
Controversies over the meaning of this description.— Among Eng- 
lish translators in verse many could not understand purple leaves 
as a part of a golden flower. Says Martyn, “ Our translators have 
greatly erred—for May represents the leaves of the stalk as being 
purple ; 
- id from one root he spreads a wood of boughs, 
y leaves, although the weed be gold, 
see ide dimme purple color hold.’ 
‘Addison has very much deviated from the sense of his 
author : 
‘A mighty spring works in its root, and cleaves 
The mighty stalk, and shews itself in leaves : 
The flow’r itself is of a golden hue, 
The leaves inclining to a darker blue. 
The leaves shoot thick about the flow’r, and grow 
Into a bush, and shade the turf below. 
“Dryden took the folia guae plurima circum funduntur to be 
the branches of the plant : 
‘ For from one root the rising stem bestows 
A wood of leaves, and wi ’let purple boughs - 
The flow’r itself is glorious to behold, 
And shines on altars like refulgent gold. 
“Dr. Trapp supposes the stem to be golden, and the leaves 
purple : 
‘For from one turf a mighty grove it bears ; 
Its stem of golden hue, but in its /eaves, 
Which copious round it sprout, the purple teint 
Of deep-dy’d violets more glossy shines.’ 
Another feature in Vergil’s description which has been 
variously understood is his epithet for what I have called ‘‘ the 
shorn autumn valleys.’’ I take it that the poet meant by /ovszs, 
shorn, to suggest time of year as well as place ; that he meant to 
imply that the fower bloomed in the late summer and fall, when 
in the valley-lands where it grew the meadow-grounds were now 
mown and the pasture-lands had been shaven close by the flocks ; 
So that it was now in shorn valleys, “in valleys where cattle have 
grazed” as Martyn suggests, that the shepherds would gather it, 
Picking it from rock-borders and ledges where it grew near the 
river. Not that it grew exactly in the mown part nor sprung up 
after mowing ; struggling with which ideas trouble came to some 
. 
