Meliogeny

1. There was a hill and on this hill there was
2. an open space, a level area
3. made green by all the grasses growing there.
4. The place lacked shade, until that poet born
5. of heaven came to be in residence,
6. and plucking his resounding lyre strings,
7. he summoned many shade trees to his presence:
8. the oak tree sacred to great Jupiter,
9. a grove of poplars (once Heliades)
10. and the Italian oak, with deep green leaves;
11. soft linden, beech and laurel (still unwed)
12. with the tender hazel and the useful ash
13. (providing us with spears and javelins);
14. pine without knots, the acorn-laden ilex,
15. the genial plane tree and the maple too,
16. (unrivaled in the brilliance of its hue);
17. and river-dwelling willows, lotus trees,
18. thin tamarisk and boxwood evergreen,
19. and myrtle with its berries green and black,
20. viburnum with its gray and blue,
21. and you as well, O twining ivy, came,
22. along with tendriled vines and the vine-clad elm,
23. the mountain ash, the spruce, the arbutus
24. (encumbered with its fruit of brilliant red)
25. and victory's reward, the supple palm,
26. and the pine tree, bare to near its shaggy top,
27. so pleasing to Cybele, Mother of the Gods,
28. since her beloved Attis put aside
29. his manhood for that trunk in which he stiffened.

-- from Charles Martin’s translation of the Metamorphoses.