APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/virgil/georgics/GEORGICS

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                   29 BC
                THE GEORGICS
                  by Virgil

  GEORGIC I

  What makes the cornfield smile; beneath what star
  Maecenas, it is meet to turn the sod
  Or marry elm with vine; how tend the steer;
  What pains for cattle-keeping, or what proof
  Of patient trial serves for thrifty bees;-
  Such are my themes.
                         O universal lights
  Most glorious! ye that lead the gliding year
  Along the sky, Liber and Ceres mild,
  If by your bounty holpen earth once changed
  Chaonian acorn for the plump wheat-ear,
  And mingled with the grape, your new-found gift,
  The draughts of Achelous; and ye Fauns
  To rustics ever kind, come foot it, Fauns
  And Dryad-maids together; your gifts I sing.
  And thou, for whose delight the war-horse first
  Sprang from earth's womb at thy great trident's stroke,
  Neptune; and haunter of the groves, for whom
  Three hundred snow-white heifers browse the brakes,
  The fertile brakes of Ceos; and clothed in power,
  Thy native forest and Lycean lawns,
  Pan, shepherd-god, forsaking, as the love
  Of thine own Maenalus constrains thee, hear
  And help, O lord of Tegea! And thou, too,
  Minerva, from whose hand the olive sprung;
  And boy-discoverer of the curved plough;
  And, bearing a young cypress root-uptorn,
  Silvanus, and Gods all and Goddesses,
  Who make the fields your care, both ye who nurse
  The tender unsown increase, and from heaven
  Shed on man's sowing the riches of your rain:
  And thou, even thou, of whom we know not yet
  What mansion of the skies shall hold thee soon,
  Whether to watch o'er cities be thy will,
  Great Caesar, and to take the earth in charge,
  That so the mighty world may welcome thee
  Lord of her increase, master of her times,
  Binding thy mother's myrtle round thy brow,
  Or as the boundless ocean's God thou come,
  Sole dread of seamen, till far Thule bow
  Before thee, and Tethys win thee to her son
  With all her waves for dower; or as a star
  Lend thy fresh beams our lagging months to cheer,
  Where 'twixt the Maid and those pursuing Claws
  A space is opening; see! red Scorpio's self
  His arms draws in, yea, and hath left thee more
  Than thy full meed of heaven: be what thou wilt-
  For neither Tartarus hopes to call thee king,
  Nor may so dire a lust of sovereignty
  E'er light upon thee, howso Greece admire
  Elysium's fields, and Proserpine not heed
  Her mother's voice entreating to return-
  Vouchsafe a prosperous voyage, and smile on this
  My bold endeavour, and pitying, even as I,
  These poor way-wildered swains, at once begin,
  Grow timely used unto the voice of prayer.
    In early spring-tide, when the icy drip
  Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr's breath
  Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then 'tis time;
  Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox,
  And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine.
  That land the craving farmer's prayer fulfils,
  Which twice the sunshine, twice the frost has felt;
  Ay, that's the land whose boundless harvest-crops
  Burst, see! the barns.
                         But ere our metal cleave
  An unknown surface, heed we to forelearn
  The winds and varying temper of the sky,
  The lineal tilth and habits of the spot,
  What every region yields, and what denies.
  Here blithelier springs the corn, and here the grape,
  There earth is green with tender growth of trees
  And grass unbidden. See how from Tmolus comes
  The saffron's fragrance, ivory from Ind,
  From Saba's weakling sons their frankincense,
  Iron from the naked Chalybs, castor rank
  From Pontus, from Epirus the prize-palms
  O' the mares of Elis.
                         Such the eternal bond
  And such the laws by Nature's hand imposed
  On clime and clime, e'er since the primal dawn
  When old Deucalion on the unpeopled earth
  Cast stones, whence men, a flinty race, were reared.
  Up then! if fat the soil, let sturdy bulls
  Upturn it from the year's first opening months,
  And let the clods lie bare till baked to dust
  By the ripe suns of summer; but if the earth
  Less fruitful just ere Arcturus rise
  With shallower trench uptilt it- 'twill suffice;
  There, lest weeds choke the crop's luxuriance, here,
  Lest the scant moisture fail the barren sand.
     Then thou shalt suffer in alternate years
  The new-reaped fields to rest, and on the plain
  A crust of sloth to harden; or, when stars
  Are changed in heaven, there sow the golden grain
  Where erst, luxuriant with its quivering pod,
  Pulse, or the slender vetch-crop, thou hast cleared,
  And lupin sour, whose brittle stalks arise,
  A hurtling forest. For the plain is parched
  By flax-crop, parched by oats, by poppies parched
  In Lethe-slumber drenched. Nathless by change
  The travailing earth is lightened, but stint not
  With refuse rich to soak the thirsty soil,
  And shower foul ashes o'er the exhausted fields.
  Thus by rotation like repose is gained,
  Nor earth meanwhile uneared and thankless left.
  Oft, too, 'twill boot to fire the naked fields,
  And the light stubble burn with crackling flames;
  Whether that earth therefrom some hidden strength
  And fattening food derives, or that the fire
  Bakes every blemish out, and sweats away
  Each useless humour, or that the heat unlocks
  New passages and secret pores, whereby
  Their life-juice to the tender blades may win;
  Or that it hardens more and helps to bind
  The gaping veins, lest penetrating showers,
  Or fierce sun's ravening might, or searching blast
  Of the keen north should sear them. Well, I wot,
  He serves the fields who with his harrow breaks
  The sluggish clods, and hurdles osier-twined
  Hales o'er them; from the far Olympian height
  Him golden Ceres not in vain regards;
  And he, who having ploughed the fallow plain
  And heaved its furrowy ridges, turns once more
  Cross-wise his shattering share, with stroke on stroke
  The earth assails, and makes the field his thrall.
    Pray for wet summers and for winters fine,
  Ye husbandmen; in winter's dust the crops
  Exceedingly rejoice, the field hath joy;
  No tilth makes Mysia lift her head so high,
  Nor Gargarus his own harvests so admire.
  Why tell of him, who, having launched his seed,
  Sets on for close encounter, and rakes smooth
  The dry dust hillocks, then on the tender corn
  Lets in the flood, whose waters follow fain;
  And when the parched field quivers, and all the blades
  Are dying, from the brow of its hill-bed,
  See! see! he lures the runnel; down it falls,
  Waking hoarse murmurs o'er the polished stones,
  And with its bubblings slakes the thirsty fields?
  Or why of him, who lest the heavy ears
  O'erweigh the stalk, while yet in tender blade
  Feeds down the crop's luxuriance, when its growth
  First tops the furrows? Why of him who drains
  The marsh-land's gathered ooze through soaking sand,
  Chiefly what time in treacherous moons a stream
  Goes out in spate, and with its coat of slime
  Holds all the country, whence the hollow dykes
  Sweat steaming vapour?
                         But no whit the more
  For all expedients tried and travail borne
  By man and beast in turning oft the soil,
  Do greedy goose and Strymon-haunting cranes
  And succory's bitter fibres cease to harm,
  Or shade not injure. The great Sire himself
  No easy road to husbandry assigned,
  And first was he by human skill to rouse
  The slumbering glebe, whetting the minds of men
  With care on care, nor suffering realm of his
  In drowsy sloth to stagnate. Before Jove
  Fields knew no taming hand of husbandmen;
  To mark the plain or mete with boundary-line-
  Even this was impious; for the common stock
  They gathered, and the earth of her own will
  All things more freely, no man bidding, bore.
  He to black serpents gave their venom-bane,
  And bade the wolf go prowl, and ocean toss;
  Shook from the leaves their honey, put fire away,
  And curbed the random rivers running wine,
  That use by gradual dint of thought on thought
  Might forge the various arts, with furrow's help
  The corn-blade win, and strike out hidden fire
  From the flint's heart. Then first the streams were ware
  Of hollowed alder-hulls: the sailor then
  Their names and numbers gave to star and star,
  Pleiads and Hyads, and Lycaon's child
  Bright Arctos; how with nooses then was found
  To catch wild beasts, and cozen them with lime,
  And hem with hounds the mighty forest-glades.
  Soon one with hand-net scourges the broad stream,
  Probing its depths, one drags his dripping toils
  Along the main; then iron's unbending might,
  And shrieking saw-blade,- for the men of old
  With wedges wont to cleave the splintering log;-
  Then divers arts arose; toil conquered all,
  Remorseless toil, and poverty's shrewd push
  In times of hardship. Ceres was the first
  Set mortals on with tools to turn the sod,
  When now the awful groves 'gan fail to bear
  Acorns and arbutes, and her wonted food
  Dodona gave no more. Soon, too, the corn
  Gat sorrow's increase, that an evil blight
  Ate up the stalks, and thistle reared his spines
  An idler in the fields; the crops die down;
  Upsprings instead a shaggy growth of burrs
  And caltrops; and amid the corn-fields trim
  Unfruitful darnel and wild oats have sway.
  Wherefore, unless thou shalt with ceaseless rake
  The weeds pursue, with shouting scare the birds,
  Prune with thy hook the dark field's matted shade,
  Pray down the showers, all vainly thou shalt eye,
  Alack! thy neighbour's heaped-up harvest-mow,
  And in the greenwood from a shaken oak
  Seek solace for thine hunger.
                         Now to tell
  The sturdy rustics' weapons, what they are,
  Without which, neither can be sown nor reared
  The fruits of harvest; first the bent plough's share
  And heavy timber, and slow-lumbering wains
  Of the Eleusinian mother, threshing-sleighs
  And drags, and harrows with their crushing weight;
  Then the cheap wicker-ware of Celeus old,
  Hurdles of arbute, and thy mystic fan,
  Iacchus; which, full tale, long ere the time
  Thou must with heed lay by, if thee await
  Not all unearned the country's crown divine.
  While yet within the woods, the elm is tamed
  And bowed with mighty force to form the stock,
  And take the plough's curved shape, then nigh the root
  A pole eight feet projecting, earth-boards twain,
  And share-beam with its double back they fix.
  For yoke is early hewn a linden light,
  And a tall beech for handle, from behind
  To turn the car at lowest: then o'er the hearth
  The wood they hang till the smoke knows it well.
    Many the precepts of the men of old
  I can recount thee, so thou start not back,
  And such slight cares to learn not weary thee.
  And this among the first: thy threshing-floor
  With ponderous roller must be levelled smooth,
  And wrought by hand, and fixed with binding chalk,
  Lest weeds arise, or dust a passage win
  Splitting the surface, then a thousand plagues
  Make sport of it: oft builds the tiny mouse
  Her home, and plants her granary, underground,
  Or burrow for their bed the purblind moles,
  Or toad is found in hollows, and all the swarm
  Of earth's unsightly creatures; or a huge
  Corn-heap the weevil plunders, and the ant,
  Fearful of coming age and penury.
    Mark too, what time the walnut in the woods
  With ample bloom shall clothe her, and bow down
  Her odorous branches, if the fruit prevail,
  Like store of grain will follow, and there shall come
  A mighty winnowing-time with mighty heat;
  But if the shade with wealth of leaves abound,
  Vainly your threshing-floor will bruise the stalks
  Rich but in chaff. Many myself have seen
  Steep, as they sow, their pulse-seeds, drenching them
  With nitre and black oil-lees, that the fruit
  Might swell within the treacherous pods, and they
  Make speed to boil at howso small a fire.
  Yet, culled with caution, proved with patient toil,
  These have I seen degenerate, did not man
  Put forth his hand with power, and year by year
  Choose out the largest. So, by fate impelled,
  Speed all things to the worse, and backward borne
  Glide from us; even as who with struggling oars
  Up stream scarce pulls a shallop, if he chance
  His arms to slacken, lo! with headlong force
  The current sweeps him down the hurrying tide.
    Us too behoves Arcturus' sign observe,
  And the Kids' seasons and the shining Snake,
  No less than those who o'er the windy main
  Borne homeward tempt the Pontic, and the jaws
  Of oyster-rife Abydos. When the Scales
  Now poising fair the hours of sleep and day
  Give half the world to sunshine, half to shade,
  Then urge your bulls, my masters; sow the plain
  Even to the verge of tameless winter's showers
  With barley: then, too, time it is to hide
  Your flax in earth, and poppy, Ceres' joy,
  Aye, more than time to bend above the plough,
  While earth, yet dry, forbids not, and the clouds
  Are buoyant. With the spring comes bean-sowing;
  Thee, too, Lucerne, the crumbling furrows then
  Receive, and millet's annual care returns,
  What time the white bull with his gilded horns
  Opens the year, before whose threatening front,
  Routed the dog-star sinks. But if it be
  For wheaten harvest and the hardy spelt,
  Thou tax the soil, to corn-ears wholly given,
  Let Atlas' daughters hide them in the dawn,
  The Cretan star, a crown of fire, depart,
  Or e'er the furrow's claim of seed thou quit,
  Or haste thee to entrust the whole year's hope
  To earth that would not. Many have begun
  Ere Maia's star be setting; these, I trow,
  Their looked-for harvest fools with empty ears.
  But if the vetch and common kidney-bean
  Thou'rt fain to sow, nor scorn to make thy care
  Pelusiac lentil, no uncertain sign
  Bootes' fall will send thee; then begin,
  Pursue thy sowing till half the frosts be done.
    Therefore it is the golden sun, his course
  Into fixed parts dividing, rules his way
  Through the twelve constellations of the world.
  Five zones the heavens contain; whereof is one
  Aye red with flashing sunlight, fervent aye
  From fire; on either side to left and right
  Are traced the utmost twain, stiff with blue ice,
  And black with scowling storm-clouds, and betwixt
  These and the midmost, other twain there lie,
  By the Gods' grace to heart-sick mortals given,
  And a path cleft between them, where might wheel
  On sloping plane the system of the Signs.
  And as toward Scythia and Rhipaean heights
  The world mounts upward, likewise sinks it down
  Toward Libya and the south, this pole of ours
  Still towering high, that other, 'neath their feet,
  By dark Styx frowned on, and the abysmal shades.
  Here glides the huge Snake forth with sinuous coils
  'Twixt the two Bears and round them river-wise-
  The Bears that fear 'neath Ocean's brim to dip.
  There either, say they, reigns the eternal hush
  Of night that knows no seasons, her black pall
  Thick-mantling fold on fold; or thitherward
  From us returning Dawn brings back the day;
  And when the first breath of his panting steeds
  On us the Orient flings, that hour with them
  Red Vesper 'gins to trim his his 'lated fires.
  Hence under doubtful skies forebode we can
  The coming tempests, hence both harvest-day
  And seed-time, when to smite the treacherous main
  With driving oars, when launch the fair-rigged fleet,
  Or in ripe hour to fell the forest-pine.
  Hence, too, not idly do we watch the stars-
  Their rising and their setting-and the year,
  Four varying seasons to one law conformed.
    If chilly showers e'er shut the farmer's door,
  Much that had soon with sunshine cried for haste,
  He may forestall; the ploughman batters keen
  His blunted share's hard tooth, scoops from a tree
  His troughs, or on the cattle stamps a brand,
  Or numbers on the corn-heaps; some make sharp
  The stakes and two-pronged forks, and willow-bands
  Amerian for the bending vine prepare.
  Now let the pliant basket plaited be
  Of bramble-twigs; now set your corn to parch
  Before the fire; now bruise it with the stone.
  Nay even on holy days some tasks to ply
  Is right and lawful: this no ban forbids,
  To turn the runnel's course, fence corn-fields in,
  Make springes for the birds, burn up the briars,
  And plunge in wholesome stream the bleating flock.
  Oft too with oil or apples plenty-cheap
  The creeping ass's ribs his driver packs,
  And home from town returning brings instead
  A dented mill-stone or black lump of pitch.
    The moon herself in various rank assigns
  The days for labour lucky: fly the fifth;
  Then sprang pale Orcus and the Eumenides;
  Earth then in awful labour brought to light
  Coeus, Iapetus, and Typhoeus fell,
  And those sworn brethren banded to break down
  The gates of heaven; thrice, sooth to say, they strove
  Ossa on Pelion's top to heave and heap,
  Aye, and on Ossa to up-roll amain
  Leafy Olympus; thrice with thunderbolt
  Their mountain-stair the Sire asunder smote.
  Seventh after tenth is lucky both to set
  The vine in earth, and take and tame the steer,
  And fix the leashes to the warp; the ninth
  To runagates is kinder, cross to thieves.
    Many the tasks that lightlier lend themselves
  In chilly night, or when the sun is young,
  And Dawn bedews the world. By night 'tis best
  To reap light stubble, and parched fields by night;
  For nights the suppling moisture never fails.
  And one will sit the long late watches out
  By winter fire-light, shaping with keen blade
  The torches to a point; his wife the while,
  Her tedious labour soothing with a song,
  Speeds the shrill comb along the warp, or else
  With Vulcan's aid boils the sweet must-juice down,
  And skims with leaves the quivering cauldron's wave.
    But ruddy Ceres in mid heat is mown,
  And in mid heat the parched ears are bruised
  Upon the floor; to plough strip, strip to sow;
  Winter's the lazy time for husbandmen.
  In the cold season farmers wont to taste
  The increase of their toil, and yield themselves
  To mutual interchange of festal cheer.
  Boon winter bids them, and unbinds their cares,
  As laden keels, when now the port they touch,
  And happy sailors crown the sterns with flowers.
  Nathless then also time it is to strip
  Acorns from oaks, and berries from the bay,
  Olives, and bleeding myrtles, then to set
  Snares for the crane, and meshes for the stag,
  And hunt the long-eared hares, then pierce the doe
  With whirl of hempen-thonged Balearic sling,
  While snow lies deep, and streams are drifting ice.
    What need to tell of autumn's storms and stars,
  And wherefore men must watch, when now the day
  Grows shorter, and more soft the summer's heat?
  When Spring the rain-bringer comes rushing down,
  Or when the beards of harvest on the plain
  Bristle already, and the milky corn
  On its green stalk is swelling? Many a time,
  When now the farmer to his yellow fields
  The reaping-hind came bringing, even in act
  To lop the brittle barley stems, have I
  Seen all the windy legions clash in war
  Together, as to rend up far and wide
  The heavy corn-crop from its lowest roots,
  And toss it skyward: so might winter's flaw,
  Dark-eddying, whirl light stalks and flying straws.
    Oft too comes looming vast along the sky
  A march of waters; mustering from above,
  The clouds roll up the tempest, heaped and grim
  With angry showers: down falls the height of heaven,
  And with a great rain floods the smiling crops,
  The oxen's labour: now the dikes fill fast,
  And the void river-beds swell thunderously,
  And all the panting firths of Ocean boil.
  The Sire himself in midnight of the clouds
  Wields with red hand the levin; through all her bulk
  Earth at the hurly quakes; the beasts are fled,
  And mortal hearts of every kindred sunk
  In cowering terror; he with flaming brand
  Athos, or Rhodope, or Ceraunian crags
  Precipitates: then doubly raves the South
  With shower on blinding shower, and woods and coasts
  Wail fitfully beneath the mighty blast.
  This fearing, mark the months and Signs of heaven,
  Whither retires him Saturn's icy star,
  And through what heavenly cycles wandereth
  The glowing orb Cyllenian. Before all
  Worship the Gods, and to great Ceres pay
  Her yearly dues upon the happy sward
  With sacrifice, anigh the utmost end
  Of winter, and when Spring begins to smile.
  Then lambs are fat, and wines are mellowest then;
  Then sleep is sweet, and dark the shadows fall
  Upon the mountains. Let your rustic youth
  To Ceres do obeisance, one and all;
  And for her pleasure thou mix honeycombs
  With milk and the ripe wine-god; thrice for luck
  Around the young corn let the victim go,
  And all the choir, a joyful company,
  Attend it, and with shouts bid Ceres come
  To be their house-mate; and let no man dare
  Put sickle to the ripened ears until,
  With woven oak his temples chapleted,
  He foot the rugged dance and chant the lay.
    Aye, and that these things we might win to know
  By certain tokens, heats, and showers, and winds
  That bring the frost, the Sire of all himself
  Ordained what warnings in her monthly round
  The moon should give, what bodes the south wind's fall,
  What oft-repeated sights the herdsman seeing
  Should keep his cattle closer to their stalls.
  No sooner are the winds at point to rise,
  Than either Ocean's firths begin to toss
  And swell, and a dry crackling sound is heard
  Upon the heights, or one loud ferment booms
  The beach afar, and through the forest goes
  A murmur multitudinous. By this
  Scarce can the billow spare the curved keels,
  When swift the sea-gulls from the middle main
  Come winging, and their shrieks are shoreward borne,
  When ocean-loving cormorants on dry land
  Besport them, and the hern, her marshy haunts
  Forsaking, mounts above the soaring cloud.
  Oft, too, when wind is toward, the stars thou'lt see
  From heaven shoot headlong, and through murky night
  Long trails of fire white-glistening in their wake,
  Or light chaff flit in air with fallen leaves,
  Or feathers on the wave-top float and play.
  But when from regions of the furious North
  It lightens, and when thunder fills the halls
  Of Eurus and of Zephyr, all the fields
  With brimming dikes are flooded, and at sea
  No mariner but furls his dripping sails.
  Never at unawares did shower annoy:
  Or, as it rises, the high-soaring cranes
  Flee to the vales before it, with face
  Upturned to heaven, the heifer snuffs the gale
  Through gaping nostrils, or about the meres
  Shrill-twittering flits the swallow, and the frogs
  Crouch in the mud and chant their dirge of old.
  Oft, too, the ant from out her inmost cells,
  Fretting the narrow path, her eggs conveys;
  Or the huge bow sucks moisture; or a host
  Of rooks from food returning in long line
  Clamour with jostling wings. Now mayst thou see
  The various ocean-fowl and those that pry
  Round Asian meads within thy fresher-pools,
  Cayster, as in eager rivalry,
  About their shoulders dash the plenteous spray,
  Now duck their head beneath the wave, now run
  Into the billows, for sheer idle joy
  Of their mad bathing-revel. Then the crow
  With full voice, good-for-naught, inviting rain,
  Stalks on the dry sand mateless and alone.
  Nor e'en the maids, that card their nightly task,
  Know not the storm-sign, when in blazing crock
  They see the lamp-oil sputtering with a growth
  Of mouldy snuff-clots.
                         So too, after rain,
  Sunshine and open skies thou mayst forecast,
  And learn by tokens sure, for then nor dimmed
  Appear the stars' keen edges, nor the moon
  As borrowing of her brother's beams to rise,
  Nor fleecy films to float along the sky.
  Not to the sun's warmth then upon the shore
  Do halcyons dear to Thetis ope their wings,
  Nor filthy swine take thought to toss on high
  With scattering snout the straw-wisps. But the clouds
  Seek more the vales, and rest upon the plain,
  And from the roof-top the night-owl for naught
  Watching the sunset plies her 'lated song.
  Distinct in clearest air is Nisus seen
  Towering, and Scylla for the purple lock
  Pays dear; for whereso, as she flies, her wings
  The light air winnow, lo! fierce, implacable,
  Nisus with mighty whirr through heaven pursues;
  Where Nisus heavenward soareth, there her wings
  Clutch as she flies, the light air winnowing still.
  Soft then the voice of rooks from indrawn throat
  Thrice, four times, o'er repeated, and full oft
  On their high cradles, by some hidden joy
  Gladdened beyond their wont, in bustling throngs
  Among the leaves they riot; so sweet it is,
  When showers are spent, their own loved nests again
  And tender brood to visit. Not, I deem,
  That heaven some native wit to these assigned,
  Or fate a larger prescience, but that when
  The storm and shifting moisture of the air
  Have changed their courses, and the sky-god now,
  Wet with the south-wind, thickens what was rare,
  And what was gross releases, then, too, change
  Their spirits' fleeting phases, and their breasts
  Feel other motions now, than when the wind
  Was driving up the cloud-rack. Hence proceeds
  That blending of the feathered choirs afield,
  The cattle's exultation, and the rooks'
  Deep-throated triumph.
                         But if the headlong sun
  And moons in order following thou regard,
  Ne'er will to-morrow's hour deceive thee, ne'er
  Wilt thou be caught by guile of cloudless night.
  When first the moon recalls her rallying fires,
  If dark the air clipped by her crescent dim,
  For folks afield and on the open sea
  A mighty rain is brewing; but if her face
  With maiden blush she mantle, 'twill be wind,
  For wind turns Phoebe still to ruddier gold.
  But if at her fourth rising, for 'tis that
  Gives surest counsel, clear she ride thro' heaven
  With horns unblunted, then shall that whole day,
  And to the month's end those that spring from it,
  Rainless and windless be, while safe ashore
  Shall sailors pay their vows to Panope,
  Glaucus, and Melicertes, Ino's child.
    The sun too, both at rising, and when soon
  He dives beneath the waves, shall yield thee signs;
  For signs, none trustier, travel with the sun,
  Both those which in their course with dawn he brings,
  And those at star-rise. When his springing orb
  With spots he pranketh, muffled in a cloud,
  And shrinks mid-circle, then of showers beware;
  For then the South comes driving from the deep,
  To trees and crops and cattle bringing bane.
  Or when at day-break through dark clouds his rays
  Burst and are scattered, or when rising pale
  Aurora quits Tithonus' saffron bed,
  But sorry shelter then, alack I will yield
  Vine-leaf to ripening grapes; so thick a hail
  In spiky showers spins rattling on the roof.
  And this yet more 'twill boot thee bear in mind,
  When now, his course upon Olympus run,
  He draws to his decline: for oft we see
  Upon the sun's own face strange colours stray;
  Dark tells of rain, of east winds fiery-red;
  If spots with ruddy fire begin to mix,
  Then all the heavens convulsed in wrath thou'lt see-
  Storm-clouds and wind together. Me that night
  Let no man bid fare forth upon the deep,
  Nor rend the rope from shore. But if, when both
  He brings again and hides the day's return,
  Clear-orbed he shineth,idly wilt thou dread
  The storm-clouds, and beneath the lustral North
  See the woods waving. What late eve in fine
  Bears in her bosom, whence the wind that brings
  Fair-weather-clouds, or what the rain South
  Is meditating, tokens of all these
  The sun will give thee. Who dare charge the sun
  With leasing? He it is who warneth oft
  Of hidden broils at hand and treachery,
  And secret swelling of the waves of war.
  He too it was, when Caesar's light was quenched,
  For Rome had pity, when his bright head he veiled
  In iron-hued darkness, till a godless age
  Trembled for night eternal; at that time
  Howbeit earth also, and the ocean-plains,
  And dogs obscene, and birds of evil bode
  Gave tokens. Yea, how often have we seen
  Etna, her furnace-walls asunder riven,
  In billowy floods boil o'er the Cyclops' fields,
  And roll down globes of fire and molten rocks!
  A clash of arms through all the heaven was heard
  By Germany; strange heavings shook the Alps.
  Yea, and by many through the breathless groves
  A voice was heard with power, and wondrous-pale
  Phantoms were seen upon the dusk of night,
  And cattle spake, portentous! streams stand still,
  And the earth yawns asunder, ivory weeps
  For sorrow in the shrines, and bronzes sweat.
  Up-twirling forests with his eddying tide,
  Madly he bears them down, that lord of floods,
  Eridanus, till through all the plain are swept
  Beasts and their stalls together. At that time
  In gloomy entrails ceased not to appear
  Dark-threatening fibres, springs to trickle blood,
  And high-built cities night-long to resound
  With the wolves' howling. Never more than then
  From skies all cloudless fell the thunderbolts,
  Nor blazed so oft the comet's fire of bale.
  Therefore a second time Philippi saw
  The Roman hosts with kindred weapons rush
  To battle, nor did the high gods deem it hard
  That twice Emathia and the wide champaign
  Of Haemus should be fattening with our blood.
  Ay, and the time will come when there anigh,
  Heaving the earth up with his curved plough,
  Some swain will light on javelins by foul rust
  Corroded, or with ponderous harrow strike
  On empty helmets, while he gapes to see
  Bones as of giants from the trench untombed.
  Gods of my country, heroes of the soil,
  And Romulus, and Mother Vesta, thou
  Who Tuscan Tiber and Rome's Palatine
  Preservest, this new champion at the least
  Our fallen generation to repair
  Forbid not. To the full and long ago
  Our blood thy Trojan perjuries hath paid,
  Laomedon. Long since the courts of heaven
  Begrudge us thee, our Caesar, and complain
  That thou regard'st the triumphs of mankind,
  Here where the wrong is right, the right is wrong,
  Where wars abound so many, and myriad-faced
  Is crime; where no meet honour hath the plough;
  The fields, their husbandmen led far away,
  Rot in neglect, and curved pruning-hooks
  Into the sword's stiff blade are fused and forged.
  Euphrates here, here Germany new strife
  Is stirring; neighbouring cities are in arms,
  The laws that bound them snapped; and godless war
  Rages through all the universe; as when
  The four-horse chariots from the barriers poured
  Still quicken o'er the course, and, idly now
  Grasping the reins, the driver by his team
  Is onward borne, nor heeds the car his curb.
  GEORGIC II

  Thus far the tilth of fields and stars of heaven;
  Now will I sing thee, Bacchus, and, with thee,
  The forest's young plantations and the fruit
  Of slow-maturing olive. Hither haste,
  O Father of the wine-press; all things here
  Teem with the bounties of thy hand; for thee
  With viny autumn laden blooms the field,
  And foams the vintage high with brimming vats;
  Hither, O Father of the wine-press, come,
  And stripped of buskin stain thy bared limbs
  In the new must with me.
                         First, nature's law
  For generating trees is manifold;
  For some of their own force spontaneous spring,
  No hand of man compelling, and possess
  The plains and river-windings far and wide,
  As pliant osier and the bending broom,
  Poplar, and willows in wan companies
  With green leaf glimmering gray; and some there be
  From chance-dropped seed that rear them, as the tall
  Chestnuts, and, mightiest of the branching wood,
  Jove's Aesculus, and oaks, oracular
  Deemed by the Greeks of old. With some sprouts forth
  A forest of dense suckers from the root,
  As elms and cherries; so, too, a pigmy plant,
  Beneath its mother's mighty shade upshoots
  The bay-tree of Parnassus. Such the modes
  Nature imparted first; hence all the race
  Of forest-trees and shrubs and sacred groves
  Springs into verdure.
                         Other means there are,
  Which use by method for itself acquired.
  One, sliving suckers from the tender frame
  Of the tree-mother, plants them in the trench;
  One buries the bare stumps within his field,
  Truncheons cleft four-wise, or sharp-pointed stakes;
  Some forest-trees the layer's bent arch await,
  And slips yet quick within the parent-soil;
  No root need others, nor doth the pruner's hand
  Shrink to restore the topmost shoot to earth
  That gave it being. Nay, marvellous to tell,
  Lopped of its limbs, the olive, a mere stock,
  Still thrusts its root out from the sapless wood,
  And oft the branches of one kind we see
  Change to another's with no loss to rue,
  Pear-tree transformed the ingrafted apple yield,
  And stony cornels on the plum-tree blush.
    Come then, and learn what tilth to each belongs
  According to their kinds, ye husbandmen,
  And tame with culture the wild fruits, lest earth
  Lie idle. O blithe to make all Ismarus
  One forest of the wine-god, and to clothe
  With olives huge Tabernus! And be thou
  At hand, and with me ply the voyage of toil
  I am bound on, O my glory, O thou that art
  Justly the chiefest portion of my fame,
  Maecenas, and on this wide ocean launched
  Spread sail like wings to waft thee. Not that I
  With my poor verse would comprehend the whole,
  Nay, though a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths
  Were mine, a voice of iron; be thou at hand,
  Skirt but the nearer coast-line; see the shore
  Is in our grasp; not now with feigned song
  Through winding bouts and tedious preludings
  Shall I detain thee.
                         Those that lift their head
  Into the realms of light spontaneously,
  Fruitless indeed, but blithe and strenuous spring,
  Since Nature lurks within the soil. And yet
  Even these, should one engraft them, or transplant
  To well-drilled trenches, will anon put of
  Their woodland temper, and, by frequent tilth,
  To whatso craft thou summon them, make speed
  To follow. So likewise will the barren shaft
  That from the stock-root issueth, if it be
  Set out with clear space amid open fields:
  Now the tree-mother's towering leaves and boughs
  Darken, despoil of increase as it grows,
  And blast it in the bearing. Lastly, that
  Which from shed seed ariseth, upward wins
  But slowly, yielding promise of its shade
  To late-born generations; apples wane
  Forgetful of their former juice, the grape
  Bears sorry clusters, for the birds a prey.
    Soothly on all must toil be spent, and all
  Trained to the trench and at great cost subdued.
  But reared from truncheons olives answer best,
  As vines from layers, and from the solid wood
  The Paphian myrtles; while from suckers spring
  Both hardy hazels and huge ash, the tree
  That rims with shade the brows of Hercules,
  And acorns dear to the Chaonian sire:
  So springs the towering palm too, and the fir
  Destined to spy the dangers of the deep.
  But the rough arbutus with walnut-fruit
  Is grafted; so have barren planes ere now
  Stout apples borne, with chestnut-flower the beech,
  The mountain-ash with pear-bloom whitened o'er,
  And swine crunched acorns 'neath the boughs of elms.
    Nor is the method of inserting eyes
  And grafting one: for where the buds push forth
  Amidst the bark, and burst the membranes thin,
  Even on the knot a narrow rift is made,
  Wherein from some strange tree a germ they pen,
  And to the moist rind bid it cleave and grow.
  Or, otherwise, in knotless trunks is hewn
  A breach, and deep into the solid grain
  A path with wedges cloven; then fruitful slips
  Are set herein, and- no long time- behold!
  To heaven upshot with teeming boughs, the tree
  Strange leaves admires and fruitage not its own.
    Nor of one kind alone are sturdy elms,
  Willow and lotus, nor the cypress-trees
  Of Ida; nor of self-same fashion spring
  Fat olives, orchades, and radii
  And bitter-berried pausians, no, nor yet
  Apples and the forests of Alcinous;
  Nor from like cuttings are Crustumian pears
  And Syrian, and the heavy hand-fillers.
  Not the same vintage from our trees hangs down,
  Which Lesbos from Methymna's tendril plucks.
  Vines Thasian are there, Mareotids white,
  These apt for richer soils, for lighter those:
  Psithian for raisin-wine more useful, thin
  Lageos, that one day will try the feet
  And tie the tongue: purples and early-ripes,
  And how, O Rhaetian, shall I hymn thy praise?
  Yet cope not therefore with Falernian bins.
  Vines Aminaean too, best-bodied wine,
  To which the Tmolian bows him, ay, and king
  Phanaeus too, and, lesser of that name,
  Argitis, wherewith not a grape can vie
  For gush of wine-juice or for length of years.
  Nor thee must I pass over, vine of Rhodes,
  Welcomed by gods and at the second board,
  Nor thee, Bumastus, with plump clusters swollen.
  But lo! how many kinds, and what their names,
  There is no telling, nor doth it boot to tell;
  Who lists to know it, he too would list to learn
  How many sand-grains are by Zephyr tossed
  On Libya's plain, or wot, when Eurus falls
  With fury on the ships, how many waves
  Come rolling shoreward from the Ionian sea.
    Not that all soils can all things bear alike.
  Willows by water-courses have their birth,
  Alders in miry fens; on rocky heights
  The barren mountain-ashes; on the shore
  Myrtles throng gayest; Bacchus, lastly, loves
  The bare hillside, and yews the north wind's chill.
  Mark too the earth by outland tillers tamed,
  And Eastern homes of Arabs, and tattooed
  Geloni; to all trees their native lands
  Allotted are; no clime but India bears
  Black ebony; the branch of frankincense
  Is Saba's sons' alone; why tell to thee
  Of balsams oozing from the perfumed wood,
  Or berries of acanthus ever green?
  Of Aethiop forests hoar with downy wool,
  Or how the Seres comb from off the leaves
  Their silky fleece? Of groves which India bears,
  Ocean's near neighbour, earth's remotest nook,
  Where not an arrow-shot can cleave the air
  Above their tree-tops? yet no laggards they,
  When girded with the quiver! Media yields
  The bitter juices and slow-lingering taste
  Of the blest citron-fruit, than which no aid
  Comes timelier, when fierce step-dames drug the cup
  With simples mixed and spells of baneful power,
  To drive the deadly poison from the limbs.
  Large the tree's self in semblance like a bay,
  And, showered it not a different scent abroad,
  A bay it had been; for no wind of heaven
  Its foliage falls; the flower, none faster, clings;
  With it the Medes for sweetness lave the lips,
  And ease the panting breathlessness of age.
    But no, not Mede-land with its wealth of woods,
  Nor Ganges fair, and Hermus thick with gold,
  Can match the praise of Italy; nor Ind,
  Nor Bactria, nor Panchaia, one wide tract
  Of incense-teeming sand. Here never bulls
  With nostrils snorting fire upturned the sod
  Sown with the monstrous dragon's teeth, nor crop
  Of warriors bristled thick with lance and helm;
  But heavy harvests and the Massic juice
  Of Bacchus fill its borders, overspread
  With fruitful flocks and olives. Hence arose
  The war-horse stepping proudly o'er the plain;
  Hence thy white flocks, Clitumnus, and the bull,
  Of victims mightiest, which full oft have led,
  Bathed in thy sacred stream, the triumph-pomp
  Of Romans to the temples of the gods.
  Here blooms perpetual spring, and summer here
  In months that are not summer's; twice teem the flocks;
  Twice doth the tree yield service of her fruit.
  But ravening tigers come not nigh, nor breed
  Of savage lion, nor aconite betrays
  Its hapless gatherers, nor with sweep so vast
  Doth the scaled serpent trail his endless coils
  Along the ground, or wreathe him into spires.
  Mark too her cities, so many and so proud,
  Of mighty toil the achievement, town on town
  Up rugged precipices heaved and reared,
  And rivers undergliding ancient walls.
  Or should I celebrate the sea that laves
  Her upper shores and lower? or those broad lakes?
  Thee, Larius, greatest and, Benacus, thee
  With billowy uproar surging like the main?
  Or sing her harbours, and the barrier cast
  Athwart the Lucrine, and how ocean chafes
  With mighty bellowings, where the Julian wave
  Echoes the thunder of his rout, and through
  Avernian inlets pours the Tuscan tide?
  A land no less that in her veins displays
  Rivers of silver, mines of copper ore,
  Ay, and with gold hath flowed abundantly.
  A land that reared a valiant breed of men,
  The Marsi and Sabellian youth, and, schooled
  To hardship, the Ligurian, and with these
  The Volscian javelin-armed, the Decii too,
  The Marii and Camilli, names of might,
  The Scipios, stubborn warriors, ay, and thee,
  Great Caesar, who in Asia's utmost bounds
  With conquering arm e'en now art fending far
  The unwarlike Indian from the heights of Rome.
  Hail! land of Saturn, mighty mother thou
  Of fruits and heroes; 'tis for thee I dare
  Unseal the sacred fountains, and essay
  Themes of old art and glory, as I sing
  The song of Ascra through the towns of Rome.
    Now for the native gifts of various soils,
  What powers hath each, what hue, what natural bent
  For yielding increase. First your stubborn lands
  And churlish hill-sides, where are thorny fields
  Of meagre marl and gravel, these delight
  In long-lived olive-groves to Pallas dear.
  Take for a sign the plenteous growth hard by
  Of oleaster, and the fields strewn wide
  With woodland berries. But a soil that's rich,
  In moisture sweet exulting, and the plain
  That teems with grasses on its fruitful breast,
  Such as full oft in hollow mountain-dell
  We view beneath us- from the craggy heights
  Streams thither flow with fertilizing mud-
  A plain which southward rising feeds the fern
  By curved ploughs detested, this one day
  Shall yield thee store of vines full strong to gush
  In torrents of the wine-god; this shall be
  Fruitful of grapes and flowing juice like that
  We pour to heaven from bowls of gold, what time
  The sleek Etruscan at the altar blows
  His ivory pipe, and on the curved dish
  We lay the reeking entrails. If to rear
  Cattle delight thee rather, steers, or lambs,
  Or goats that kill the tender plants, then seek
  Full-fed Tarentum's glades and distant fields,
  Or such a plain as luckless Mantua lost
  Whose weedy water feeds the snow-white swan:
  There nor clear springs nor grass the flocks will fail,
  And all the day-long browsing of thy herds
  Shall the cool dews of one brief night repair.
  Land which the burrowing share shows dark and rich,
  With crumbling soil- for this we counterfeit
  In ploughing- for corn is goodliest; from no field
  More wains thou'lt see wend home with plodding steers;
  Or that from which the husbandman in spleen
  Has cleared the timber, and o'erthrown the copse
  That year on year lay idle, and from the roots
  Uptorn the immemorial haunt of birds;
  They banished from their nests have sought the skies;
  But the rude plain beneath the ploughshare's stroke
  Starts into sudden brightness. For indeed
  The starved hill-country gravel scarce serves the bees
  With lowly cassias and with rosemary;
  Rough tufa and chalk too, by black water-worms
  Gnawed through and through, proclaim no soils beside
  So rife with serpent-dainties, or that yield
  Such winding lairs to lurk in. That again,
  Which vapoury mist and flitting smoke exhales,
  Drinks moisture up and casts it forth at will,
  Which, ever in its own green grass arrayed,
  Mars not the metal with salt scurf of rust-
  That shall thine elms with merry vines enwreathe;
  That teems with olive; that shall thy tilth prove kind
  To cattle, and patient of the curved share.
  Such ploughs rich Capua, such the coast that skirts
  Thy ridge, Vesuvius, and the Clanian flood,
  Acerrae's desolation and her bane.
  How each to recognize now hear me tell.
  Dost ask if loose or passing firm it be-
  Since one for corn hath liking, one for wine,
  The firmer sort for Ceres, none too loose
  For thee, Lyaeus?- with scrutinizing eye
  First choose thy ground, and bid a pit be sunk
  Deep in the solid earth, then cast the mould
  All back again, and stamp the surface smooth.
  If it suffice not, loose will be the land,
  More meet for cattle and for kindly vines;
  But if, rebellious, to its proper bounds
  The soil returns not, but fills all the trench
  And overtops it, then the glebe is gross;
  Look for stiff ridges and reluctant clods,
  And with strong bullocks cleave the fallow crust.
  Salt ground again, and bitter, as 'tis called-
  Barren for fruits, by tilth untamable,
  Nor grape her kind, nor apples their good name
  Maintaining- will in this wise yield thee proof:
  Stout osier-baskets from the rafter-smoke,
  And strainers of the winepress pluck thee down;
  Hereinto let that evil land, with fresh
  Spring-water mixed, be trampled to the full;
  The moisture, mark you, will ooze all away,
  In big drops issuing through the osier-withes,
  But plainly will its taste the secret tell,
  And with a harsh twang ruefully distort
  The mouths of them that try it. Rich soil again
  We learn on this wise: tossed from hand to hand
  Yet cracks it never, but pitch-like, as we hold,
  Clings to the fingers. A land with moisture rife
  Breeds lustier herbage, and is more than meet
  Prolific. Ah I may never such for me
  O'er-fertile prove, or make too stout a show
  At the first earing! Heavy land or light
  The mute self-witness of its weight betrays.
  A glance will serve to warn thee which is black,
  Or what the hue of any. But hard it is
  To track the signs of that pernicious cold:
  Pines only, noxious yews, and ivies dark
  At times reveal its traces.
                        All these rules
  Regarding, let your land, ay, long before,
  Scorch to the quick, and into trenches carve
  The mighty mountains, and their upturned clods
  Bare to the north wind, ere thou plant therein
  The vine's prolific kindred. Fields whose soil
  Is crumbling are the best: winds look to that,
  And bitter hoar-frosts, and the delver's toil
  Untiring, as he stirs the loosened glebe.
  But those, whose vigilance no care escapes,
  Search for a kindred site, where first to rear
  A nursery for the trees, and eke whereto
  Soon to translate them, lest the sudden shock
  From their new mother the young plants estrange.
  Nay, even the quarter of the sky they brand
  Upon the bark, that each may be restored,
  As erst it stood, here bore the southern heats,
  Here turned its shoulder to the northern pole;
  So strong is custom formed in early years.
  Whether on hill or plain 'tis best to plant
  Your vineyard first inquire. If on some plain
  You measure out rich acres, then plant thick;
  Thick planting makes no niggard of the vine;
  But if on rising mound or sloping bill,
  Then let the rows have room, so none the less
  Each line you draw, when all the trees are set,
  May tally to perfection. Even as oft
  In mighty war, whenas the legion's length
  Deploys its cohorts, and the column stands
  In open plain, the ranks of battle set,
  And far and near with rippling sheen of arms
  The wide earth flickers, nor yet in grisly strife
  Foe grapples foe, but dubious 'twixt the hosts
  The war-god wavers; so let all be ranged
  In equal rows symmetric, not alone
  To feed an idle fancy with the view,
  But since not otherwise will earth afford
  Vigour to all alike, nor yet the boughs
  Have power to stretch them into open space.
    Shouldst haply of the furrow's depth inquire,
  Even to a shallow trench I dare commit
  The vine; but deeper in the ground is fixed
  The tree that props it, aesculus in chief,
  Which howso far its summit soars toward heaven,
  So deep strikes root into the vaults of hell.
  It therefore neither storms, nor blasts, nor showers
  Wrench from its bed; unshaken it abides,
  Sees many a generation, many an age
  Of men roll onward, and survives them all,
  Stretching its titan arms and branches far,
  Sole central pillar of a world of shade.
    Nor toward the sunset let thy vineyards slope,
  Nor midst the vines plant hazel; neither take
  The topmost shoots for cuttings, nor from the top
  Of the supporting tree your suckers tear;
  So deep their love of earth; nor wound the plants
  With blunted blade; nor truncheons intersperse
  Of the wild olive: for oft from careless swains
  A spark hath fallen, that, 'neath the unctuous rind
  Hid thief-like first, now grips the tough tree-bole,
  And mounting to the leaves on high, sends forth
  A roar to heaven, then coursing through the boughs
  And airy summits reigns victoriously,
  Wraps all the grove in robes of fire, and gross
  With pitch-black vapour heaves the murky reek
  Skyward, but chiefly if a storm has swooped
  Down on the forest, and a driving wind
  Rolls up the conflagration. When 'tis so,
  Their root-force fails them, nor, when lopped away,
  Can they recover, and from the earth beneath
  Spring to like verdure; thus alone survives
  The bare wild olive with its bitter leaves.
    Let none persuade thee, howso weighty-wise,
  To stir the soil when stiff with Boreas' breath.
  Then ice-bound winter locks the fields, nor lets
  The young plant fix its frozen root to earth.
  Best sow your vineyards when in blushing Spring
  Comes the white bird long-bodied snakes abhor,
  Or on the eve of autumn's earliest frost,
  Ere the swift sun-steeds touch the wintry Signs,
  While summer is departing. Spring it is
  Blesses the fruit-plantation, Spring the groves;
  In Spring earth swells and claims the fruitful seed.
  Then Aether, sire omnipotent, leaps down
  With quickening showers to his glad wife's embrace,
  And, might with might commingling, rears to life
  All germs that teem within her; then resound
  With songs of birds the greenwood-wildernesses,
  And in due time the herds their loves renew;
  Then the boon earth yields increase, and the fields
  Unlock their bosoms to the warm west winds;
  Soft moisture spreads o'er all things, and the blades
  Face the new suns, and safely trust them now;
  The vine-shoot, fearless of the rising south,
  Or mighty north winds driving rain from heaven,
  Bursts into bud, and every leaf unfolds.
  Even so, methinks, when Earth to being sprang,
  Dawned the first days, and such the course they held;
  'Twas Spring-tide then, ay, Spring, the mighty world
  Was keeping: Eurus spared his wintry blasts,
  When first the flocks drank sunlight, and a race
  Of men like iron from the hard glebe arose,
  And wild beasts thronged the woods, and stars the heaven.
  Nor could frail creatures bear this heavy strain,
  Did not so large a respite interpose
  'Twixt frost and heat, and heaven's relenting arms
  Yield earth a welcome.
                         For the rest, whate'er
  The sets thou plantest in thy fields, thereon
  Strew refuse rich, and with abundant earth
  Take heed to hide them, and dig in withal
  Rough shells or porous stone, for therebetween
  Will water trickle and fine vapour creep,
  And so the plants their drooping spirits raise.
  Aye, and there have been, who with weight of stone
  Or heavy potsherd press them from above;
  This serves for shield in pelting showers, and this
  When the hot dog-star chaps the fields with drought.
    The slips once planted, yet remains to cleave
  The earth about their roots persistently,
  And toss the cumbrous hoes, or task the soil
  With burrowing plough-share, and ply up and down
  Your labouring bullocks through the vineyard's midst,
  Then too smooth reeds and shafts of whittled wand,
  And ashen poles and sturdy forks to shape,
  Whereby supported they may learn to mount,
  Laugh at the gales, and through the elm-tops win
  From story up to story.
                         Now while yet
  The leaves are in their first fresh infant growth,
  Forbear their frailty, and while yet the bough
  Shoots joyfully toward heaven, with loosened rein
  Launched on the void, assail it not as yet
  With keen-edged sickle, but let the leaves alone
  Be culled with clip of fingers here and there.
  But when they clasp the elms with sturdy trunks
  Erect, then strip the leaves off, prune the boughs;
  Sooner they shrink from steel, but then put forth
  The arm of power, and stem the branchy tide.
    Hedges too must be woven and all beasts
  Barred entrance, chiefly while the leaf is young
  And witless of disaster; for therewith,
  Beside harsh winters and o'erpowering sun,
  Wild buffaloes and pestering goats for ay
  Besport them, sheep and heifers glut their greed.
  Nor cold by hoar-frost curdled, nor the prone
  Dead weight of summer upon the parched crags,
  So scathe it, as the flocks with venom-bite
  Of their hard tooth, whose gnawing scars the stem.
  For no offence but this to Bacchus bleeds
  The goat at every altar, and old plays
  Upon the stage find entrance; therefore too
  The sons of Theseus through the country-side-
  Hamlet and crossway- set the prize of wit,
  And on the smooth sward over oiled skins
  Dance in their tipsy frolic. Furthermore
  The Ausonian swains, a race from Troy derived,
  Make merry with rough rhymes and boisterous mirth,
  Grim masks of hollowed bark assume, invoke
  Thee with glad hymns, O Bacchus, and to thee
  Hang puppet-faces on tall pines to swing.
  Hence every vineyard teems with mellowing fruit,
  Till hollow vale o'erflows, and gorge profound,
  Where'er the god hath turned his comely head.
  Therefore to Bacchus duly will we sing
  Meet honour with ancestral hymns, and cates
  And dishes bear him; and the doomed goat
  Led by the horn shall at the altar stand,
  Whose entrails rich on hazel-spits we'll roast.
    This further task again, to dress the vine,
  Hath needs beyond exhausting; the whole soil
  Thrice, four times, yearly must be cleft, the sod
  With hoes reversed be crushed continually,
  The whole plantation lightened of its leaves.
  Round on the labourer spins the wheel of toil,
  As on its own track rolls the circling year.
  Soon as the vine her lingering leaves hath shed,
  And the chill north wind from the forests shook
  Their coronal, even then the careful swain
  Looks keenly forward to the coming year,
  With Saturn's curved fang pursues and prunes
  The vine forlorn, and lops it into shape.
  Be first to dig the ground up, first to clear
  And burn the refuse-branches, first to house
  Again your vine-poles, last to gather fruit.
  Twice doth the thickening shade beset the vine,
  Twice weeds with stifling briers o'ergrow the crop;
  And each a toilsome labour. Do thou praise
  Broad acres, farm but few. Rough twigs beside
  Of butcher's broom among the woods are cut,
  And reeds upon the river-banks, and still
  The undressed willow claims thy fostering care.
  So now the vines are fettered, now the trees
  Let go the sickle, and the last dresser now
  Sings of his finished rows; but still the ground
  Must vexed be, the dust be stirred, and heaven
  Still set thee trembling for the ripened grapes.
    Not so with olives; small husbandry need they,
  Nor look for sickle bowed or biting rake,
  When once they have gripped the soil, and borne the breeze.
  Earth of herself, with hooked fang laid bare,
  Yields moisture for the plants, and heavy fruit,
  The ploughshare aiding; therewithal thou'lt rear
  The olive's fatness well-beloved of Peace.
    Apples, moreover, soon as first they feel
  Their stems wax lusty, and have found their strength,
  To heaven climb swiftly, self-impelled, nor crave
  Our succour. All the grove meanwhile no less
  With fruit is swelling, and the wild haunts of birds
  Blush with their blood-red berries. Cytisus
  Is good to browse on, the tall forest yields
  Pine-torches, and the nightly fires are fed
  And shoot forth radiance. And shall men be loath
  To plant, nor lavish of their pains? Why trace
  Things mightier? Willows even and lowly brooms
  To cattle their green leaves, to shepherds shade,
  Fences for crops, and food for honey yield.
  And blithe it is Cytorus to behold
  Waving with box, Narycian groves of pitch;
  Oh! blithe the sight of fields beholden not
  To rake or man's endeavour! the barren woods
  That crown the scalp of Caucasus, even these,
  Which furious blasts for ever rive and rend,
  Yield various wealth, pine-logs that serve for ships,
  Cedar and cypress for the homes of men;
  Hence, too, the farmers shave their wheel-spokes, hence
  Drums for their wains, and curved boat-keels fit;
  Willows bear twigs enow, the elm-tree leaves,
  Myrtle stout spear-shafts, war-tried cornel too;
  Yews into Ituraean bows are bent:
  Nor do smooth lindens or lathe-polished box
  Shrink from man's shaping and keen-furrowing steel;
  Light alder floats upon the boiling flood
  Sped down the Padus, and bees house their swarms
  In rotten holm-oak's hollow bark and bole.
  What of like praise can Bacchus' gifts afford?
  Nay, Bacchus even to crime hath prompted, he
  The wine-infuriate Centaurs quelled with death,
  Rhoetus and Pholus, and with mighty bowl
  Hylaeus threatening high the Lapithae.
    Oh! all too happy tillers of the soil,
  Could they but know their blessedness, for whom
  Far from the clash of arms all-equal earth
  Pours from the ground herself their easy fare!
  What though no lofty palace portal-proud
  From all its chambers vomits forth a tide
  Of morning courtiers, nor agape they gaze
  On pillars with fair tortoise-shell inwrought,
  Gold-purfled robes, and bronze from Ephyre;
  Nor is the whiteness of their wool distained
  With drugs Assyrian, nor clear olive's use
  With cassia tainted; yet untroubled calm,
  A life that knows no falsehood, rich enow
  With various treasures, yet broad-acred ease,
  Grottoes and living lakes, yet Tempes cool,
  Lowing of kine, and sylvan slumbers soft,
  They lack not; lawns and wild beasts' haunts are there,
  A youth of labour patient, need-inured,
  Worship, and reverend sires: with them from earth
  Departing justice her last footprints left.
    Me before all things may the Muses sweet,
  Whose rites I bear with mighty passion pierced,
  Receive, and show the paths and stars of heaven,
  The sun's eclipses and the labouring moons,
  From whence the earthquake, by what power the seas
  Swell from their depths, and, every barrier burst,
  Sink back upon themselves, why winter-suns
  So haste to dip 'neath ocean, or what check
  The lingering night retards. But if to these
  High realms of nature the cold curdling blood
  About my heart bar access, then be fields
  And stream-washed vales my solace, let me love
  Rivers and woods, inglorious. Oh for you
  Plains, and Spercheius, and Taygete,
  By Spartan maids o'er-revelled! Oh, for one,
  Would set me in deep dells of Haemus cool,
  And shield me with his boughs' o'ershadowing might!
  Happy, who had the skill to understand
  Nature's hid causes, and beneath his feet
  All terrors cast, and death's relentless doom,
  And the loud roar of greedy Acheron.
  Blest too is he who knows the rural gods,
  Pan, old Silvanus, and the sister-nymphs!
  Him nor the rods of public power can bend,
  Nor kingly purple, nor fierce feud that drives
  Brother to turn on brother, nor descent
  Of Dacian from the Danube's leagued flood,
  Nor Rome's great State, nor kingdoms like to die;
  Nor hath he grieved through pitying of the poor,
  Nor envied him that hath. What fruit the boughs,
  And what the fields, of their own bounteous will
  Have borne, he gathers; nor iron rule of laws,
  Nor maddened Forum have his eyes beheld,
  Nor archives of the people. Others vex
  The darksome gulfs of Ocean with their oars,
  Or rush on steel: they press within the courts
  And doors of princes; one with havoc falls
  Upon a city and its hapless hearths,
  From gems to drink, on Tyrian rugs to lie;
  This hoards his wealth and broods o'er buried gold;
  One at the rostra stares in blank amaze;
  One gaping sits transported by the cheers,
  The answering cheers of plebs and senate rolled
  Along the benches: bathed in brothers' blood
  Men revel, and, all delights of hearth and home
  For exile changing, a new country seek
  Beneath an alien sun. The husbandman
  With hooked ploughshare turns the soil; from hence
  Springs his year's labour; hence, too, he sustains
  Country and cottage homestead, and from hence
  His herds of cattle and deserving steers.
  No respite! still the year o'erflows with fruit,
  Or young of kine, or Ceres' wheaten sheaf,
  With crops the furrow loads, and bursts the barns.
  Winter is come: in olive-mills they bruise
  The Sicyonian berry; acorn-cheered
  The swine troop homeward; woods their arbutes yield;
  So, various fruit sheds Autumn, and high up
  On sunny rocks the mellowing vintage bakes.
  Meanwhile about his lips sweet children cling;
  His chaste house keeps its purity; his kine
  Drop milky udders, and on the lush green grass
  Fat kids are striving, horn to butting horn.
  Himself keeps holy days; stretched o'er the sward,
  Where round the fire his comrades crown the bowl,
  He pours libation, and thy name invokes,
  Lenaeus, and for the herdsmen on an elm
  Sets up a mark for the swift javelin; they
  Strip their tough bodies for the rustic sport.
  Such life of yore the ancient Sabines led,
  Such Remus and his brother: Etruria thus,
  Doubt not, to greatness grew, and Rome became
  The fair world's fairest, and with circling wall
  Clasped to her single breast the sevenfold hills.
  Ay, ere the reign of Dicte's king, ere men,
  Waxed godless, banqueted on slaughtered bulls,
  Such life on earth did golden Saturn lead.
  Nor ear of man had heard the war-trump's blast,
  Nor clang of sword on stubborn anvil set.
    But lo! a boundless space we have travelled o'er;
  'Tis time our steaming horses to unyoke.
  GEORGIC III

  Thee too, great Pales, will I hymn, and thee,
  Amphrysian shepherd, worthy to be sung,
  You, woods and waves Lycaean. All themes beside,
  Which else had charmed the vacant mind with song,
  Are now waxed common. Of harsh Eurystheus who
  The story knows not, or that praiseless king
  Busiris, and his altars? or by whom
  Hath not the tale been told of Hylas young,
  Latonian Delos and Hippodame,
  And Pelops for his ivory shoulder famed,
  Keen charioteer? Needs must a path be tried,
  By which I too may lift me from the dust,
  And float triumphant through the mouths of men.
  Yea, I shall be the first, so life endure,
  To lead the Muses with me, as I pass
  To mine own country from the Aonian height;
  I, Mantua, first will bring thee back the palms
  Of Idumaea, and raise a marble shrine
  On thy green plain fast by the water-side,
  Where Mincius winds more vast in lazy coils,
  And rims his margent with the tender reed.
  Amid my shrine shall Caesar's godhead dwell.
  To him will I, as victor, bravely dight
  In Tyrian purple, drive along the bank
  A hundred four-horse cars. All Greece for me,
  Leaving Alpheus and Molorchus' grove,
  On foot shall strive, or with the raw-hide glove;
  Whilst I, my head with stripped green olive crowned,
  Will offer gifts. Even 'tis present joy
  To lead the high processions to the fane,
  And view the victims felled; or how the scene
  Sunders with shifted face, and Britain's sons
  Inwoven thereon with those proud curtains rise.
  Of gold and massive ivory on the doors
  I'll trace the battle of the Gangarides,
  And our Quirinus' conquering arms, and there
  Surging with war, and hugely flowing, the Nile,
  And columns heaped on high with naval brass.
  And Asia's vanquished cities I will add,
  And quelled Niphates, and the Parthian foe,
  Who trusts in flight and backward-volleying darts,
  And trophies torn with twice triumphant hand
  From empires twain on ocean's either shore.
  And breathing forms of Parian marble there
  Shall stand, the offspring of Assaracus,
  And great names of the Jove-descended folk,
  And father Tros, and Troy's first founder, lord
  Of Cynthus. And accursed Envy there
  Shall dread the Furies, and thy ruthless flood,
  Cocytus, and Ixion's twisted snakes,
  And that vast wheel and ever-baffling stone.
  Meanwhile the Dryad-haunted woods and lawns
  Unsullied seek we; 'tis thy hard behest,
  Maecenas. Without thee no lofty task
  My mind essays. Up! break the sluggish bonds
  Of tarriance; with loud din Cithaeron calls,
  Steed-taming Epidaurus, and thy hounds,
  Taygete; and hark! the assenting groves
  With peal on peal reverberate the roar.
  Yet must I gird me to rehearse ere long
  The fiery fights of Caesar, speed his name
  Through ages, countless as to Caesar's self
  From the first birth-dawn of Tithonus old.
    If eager for the prized Olympian palm
  One breed the horse, or bullock strong to plough,
  Be his prime care a shapely dam to choose.
  Of kine grim-faced is goodliest, with coarse head
  And burly neck, whose hanging dewlaps reach
  From chin to knee; of boundless length her flank;
  Large every way she is, large-footed even,
  With incurved horns and shaggy ears beneath.
  Nor let mislike me one with spots of white
  Conspicuous, or that spurns the yoke, whose horn
  At times hath vice in't: liker bull-faced she,
  And tall-limbed wholly, and with tip of tail
  Brushing her footsteps as she walks along.
  The age for Hymen's rites, Lucina's pangs,
  Ere ten years ended, after four begins;
  Their residue of days nor apt to teem,
  Nor strong for ploughing. Meantime, while youth's delight
  Survives within them, loose the males: be first
  To speed thy herds of cattle to their loves,
  Breed stock with stock, and keep the race supplied.
  Ah! life's best hours are ever first to fly
  From hapless mortals; in their place succeed
  Disease and dolorous eld; till travail sore
  And death unpitying sweep them from the scene.
  Still will be some, whose form thou fain wouldst change;
  Renew them still; with yearly choice of young
  Preventing losses, lest too late thou rue.
    Nor steeds crave less selection; but on those
  Thou think'st to rear, the promise of their line,
  From earliest youth thy chiefest pains bestow.
  See from the first yon high-bred colt afield,
  His lofty step, his limbs' elastic tread:
  Dauntless he leads the herd, still first to try
  The threatening flood, or brave the unknown bridge,
  By no vain noise affrighted; lofty-necked,
  With clean-cut head, short belly, and stout back;
  His sprightly breast exuberant with brawn.
  Chestnut and grey are good; the worst-hued white
  And sorrel. Then lo! if arms are clashed afar,
  Bide still he cannot: ears stiffen and limbs quake;
  His nostrils snort and roll out wreaths of fire.
  Dense is his mane, that when uplifted falls
  On his right shoulder; betwixt either loin
  The spine runs double; his earth-dinting hoof
  Rings with the ponderous beat of solid horn.
  Even such a horse was Cyllarus, reined and tamed
  By Pollux of Amyclae; such the pair
  In Grecian song renowned, those steeds of Mars,
  And famed Achilles' team: in such-like form
  Great Saturn's self with mane flung loose on neck
  Sped at his wife's approach, and flying filled
  The heights of Pelion with his piercing neigh.
    Even him, when sore disease or sluggish eld
  Now saps his strength, pen fast at home, and spare
  His not inglorious age. A horse grown old
  Slow kindling unto love in vain prolongs
  The fruitless task, and, to the encounter come,
  As fire in stubble blusters without strength,
  He rages idly. Therefore mark thou first
  Their age and mettle, other points anon,
  As breed and lineage, or what pain was theirs
  To lose the race, what pride the palm to win.
  Seest how the chariots in mad rivalry
  Poured from the barrier grip the course and go,
  When youthful hope is highest, and every heart
  Drained with each wild pulsation? How they ply
  The circling lash, and reaching forward let
  The reins hang free! Swift spins the glowing wheel;
  And now they stoop, and now erect in air
  Seem borne through space and towering to the sky:
  No stop, no stay; the dun sand whirls aloft;
  They reek with foam-flakes and pursuing breath;
  So sweet is fame, so prized the victor's palm.
  'Twas Ericthonius first took heart to yoke
  Four horses to his car, and rode above
  The whirling wheels to victory: but the ring
  And bridle-reins, mounted on horses' backs,
  The Pelethronian Lapithae bequeathed,
  And taught the knight in arms to spurn the ground,
  And arch the upgathered footsteps of his pride.
  Each task alike is arduous, and for each
  A horse young, fiery, swift of foot, they seek;
  How oft so-e'er yon rival may have chased
  The flying foe, or boast his native plain
  Epirus, or Mycenae's stubborn hold,
  And trace his lineage back to Neptune's birth.
    These points regarded, as the time draws nigh,
  With instant zeal they lavish all their care
  To plump with solid fat the chosen chief
  And designated husband of the herd:
  And flowery herbs they cut, and serve him well
  With corn and running water, that his strength
  Not fail him for that labour of delight,
  Nor puny colts betray the feeble sire.
  The herd itself of purpose they reduce
  To leanness, and when love's sweet longing first
  Provokes them, they forbid the leafy food,
  And pen them from the springs, and oft beside
  With running shake, and tire them in the sun,
  What time the threshing-floor groans heavily
  With pounding of the corn-ears, and light chaff
  Is whirled on high to catch the rising west.
  This do they that the soil's prolific powers
  May not be dulled by surfeiting, nor choke
  The sluggish furrows, but eagerly absorb
  Their fill of love, and deeply entertain.
    To care of sire the mother's care succeeds.
  When great with young they wander nigh their time,
  Let no man suffer them to drag the yoke
  In heavy wains, nor leap across the way,
  Nor scour the meads, nor swim the rushing flood.
  In lonely lawns they feed them, by the course
  Of brimming streams, where moss is, and the banks
  With grass are greenest, where are sheltering caves,
  And far outstretched the rock-flung shadow lies.
  Round wooded Silarus and the ilex-bowers
  Of green Alburnus swarms a winged pest-
  Its Roman name Asilus, by the Greeks
  Termed Oestros- fierce it is, and harshly hums,
  Driving whole herds in terror through the groves,
  Till heaven is madded by their bellowing din,
  And Tanager's dry bed and forest-banks.
  With this same scourge did Juno wreak of old
  The terrors of her wrath, a plague devised
  Against the heifer sprung from Inachus.
  From this too thou, since in the noontide heats
  'Tis most persistent, fend thy teeming herds,
  And feed them when the sun is newly risen,
  Or the first stars are ushering in the night.
    But, yeaning ended, all their tender care
  Is to the calves transferred; at once with marks
  They brand them, both to designate their race,
  And which to rear for breeding, or devote
  As altar-victims, or to cleave the ground
  And into ridges tear and turn the sod.
  The rest along the greensward graze at will.
  Those that to rustic uses thou wouldst mould,
  As calves encourage and take steps to tame,
  While pliant wills and plastic youth allow.
  And first of slender withies round the throat
  Loose collars hang, then when their free-born necks
  Are used to service, with the self-same bands
  Yoke them in pairs, and steer by steer compel
  Keep pace together. And time it is that oft
  Unfreighted wheels be drawn along the ground
  Behind them, as to dint the surface-dust;
  Then let the beechen axle strain and creak
  'Neath some stout burden, whilst a brazen pole
  Drags on the wheels made fast thereto. Meanwhile
  For their unbroken youth not grass alone,
  Nor meagre willow-leaves and marish-sedge,
  But corn-ears with thy hand pluck from the crops.
  Nor shall the brood-kine, as of yore, for thee
  Brim high the snowy milking-pail, but spend
  Their udders' fullness on their own sweet young.
    But if fierce squadrons and the ranks of war
  Delight thee rather, or on wheels to glide
  At Pisa, with Alpheus fleeting by,
  And in the grove of Jupiter urge on
  The flying chariot, be your steed's first task
  To face the warrior's armed rage, and brook
  The trumpet, and long roar of rumbling wheels,
  And clink of chiming bridles in the stall;
  Then more and more to love his master's voice
  Caressing, or loud hand that claps his neck.
  Ay, thus far let him learn to dare, when first
  Weaned from his mother, and his mouth at times
  Yield to the supple halter, even while yet
  Weak, tottering-limbed, and ignorant of life.
  But, three years ended, when the fourth arrives,
  Now let him tarry not to run the ring
  With rhythmic hoof-beat echoing, and now learn
  Alternately to curve each bending leg,
  And be like one that struggleth; then at last
  Challenge the winds to race him, and at speed
  Launched through the open, like a reinless thing,
  Scarce print his footsteps on the surface-sand.
  As when with power from Hyperborean climes
  The north wind stoops, and scatters from his path
  Dry clouds and storms of Scythia; the tall corn
  And rippling plains 'gin shiver with light gusts;
  A sound is heard among the forest-tops;
  Long waves come racing shoreward: fast he flies,
  With instant pinion sweeping earth and main.
    A steed like this or on the mighty course
  Of Elis at the goal will sweat, and shower
  Red foam-flakes from his mouth, or, kindlier task,
  With patient neck support the Belgian car.
  Then, broken at last, let swell their burly frame
  With fattening corn-mash, for, unbroke, they will
  With pride wax wanton, and, when caught, refuse
  Tough lash to brook or jagged curb obey.
    But no device so fortifies their power
  As love's blind stings of passion to forefend,
  Whether on steed or steer thy choice be set.
  Ay, therefore 'tis they banish bulls afar
  To solitary pastures, or behind
  Some mountain-barrier, or broad streams beyond,
  Or else in plenteous stalls pen fast at home.
  For, even through sight of her, the female wastes
  His strength with smouldering fire, till he forget
  Both grass and woodland. She indeed full oft
  With her sweet charms can lovers proud compel
  To battle for the conquest horn to horn.
  In Sila's forest feeds the heifer fair,
  While each on each the furious rivals run;
  Wound follows wound; the black blood laves their limbs;
  Horns push and strive against opposing horns,
  With mighty groaning; all the forest-side
  And far Olympus bellow back the roar.
  Nor wont the champions in one stall to couch;
  But he that's worsted hies him to strange climes
  Far off, an exile, moaning much the shame,
  The blows of that proud conqueror, then love's loss
  Avenged not; with one glance toward the byre,
  His ancient royalties behind him lie.
  So with all heed his strength he practiseth,
  And nightlong makes the hard bare stones his bed,
  And feeds on prickly leaf and pointed rush,
  And proves himself, and butting at a tree
  Learns to fling wrath into his horns, with blows
  Provokes the air, and scattering clouds of sand
  Makes prelude of the battle; afterward,
  With strength repaired and gathered might breaks camp,
  And hurls him headlong on the unthinking foe:
  As in mid ocean when a wave far of
  Begins to whiten, mustering from the main
  Its rounded breast, and, onward rolled to land
  Falls with prodigious roar among the rocks,
  Huge as a very mountain: but the depths
  Upseethe in swirling eddies, and disgorge
  The murky sand-lees from their sunken bed.
    Nay, every race on earth of men, and beasts,
  And ocean-folk, and flocks, and painted birds,
  Rush to the raging fire: love sways them all.
  Never than then more fiercely o'er the plain
  Prowls heedless of her whelps the lioness:
  Nor monstrous bears such wide-spread havoc-doom
  Deal through the forests; then the boar is fierce,
  Most deadly then the tigress: then, alack!
  Ill roaming is it on Libya's lonely plains.
  Mark you what shivering thrills the horse's frame,
  If but a waft the well-known gust conveys?
  Nor curb can check them then, nor lash severe,
  Nor rocks and caverned crags, nor barrier-floods,
  That rend and whirl and wash the hills away.
  Then speeds amain the great Sabellian boar,
  His tushes whets, with forefoot tears the ground,
  Rubs 'gainst a tree his flanks, and to and fro
  Hardens each wallowing shoulder to the wound.
  What of the youth, when love's relentless might
  Stirs the fierce fire within his veins? Behold!
  In blindest midnight how he swims the gulf
  Convulsed with bursting storm-clouds! Over him
  Heaven's huge gate thunders; the rock-shattered main
  Utters a warning cry; nor parents' tears
  Can backward call him, nor the maid he loves,
  Too soon to die on his untimely pyre.
  What of the spotted ounce to Bacchus dear,
  Or warlike wolf-kin or the breed of dogs?
  Why tell how timorous stags the battle join?
  O'er all conspicuous is the rage of mares,
  By Venus' self inspired of old, what time
  The Potnian four with rending jaws devoured
  The limbs of Glaucus. Love-constrained they roam
  Past Gargarus, past the loud Ascanian flood;
  They climb the mountains, and the torrents swim;
  And when their eager marrow first conceives
  The fire, in Spring-tide chiefly, for with Spring
  Warmth doth their frames revisit, then they stand
  All facing westward on the rocky heights,
  And of the gentle breezes take their fill;
  And oft unmated, marvellous to tell,
  But of the wind impregnate, far and wide
  O'er craggy height and lowly vale they scud,
  Not toward thy rising, Eurus, or the sun's,
  But westward and north-west, or whence up-springs
  Black Auster, that glooms heaven with rainy cold.
  Hence from their groin slow drips a poisonous juice,
  By shepherds truly named hippomanes,
  Hippomanes, fell stepdames oft have culled,
  And mixed with herbs and spells of baneful bode.
    Fast flies meanwhile the irreparable hour,
  As point to point our charmed round we trace.
  Enough of herds. This second task remains,
  The wool-clad flocks and shaggy goats to treat.
  Here lies a labour; hence for glory look,
  Brave husbandmen. Nor doubtfully know
  How hard it is for words to triumph here,
  And shed their lustre on a theme so slight:
  But I am caught by ravishing desire
  Above the lone Parnassian steep; I love
  To walk the heights, from whence no earlier track
  Slopes gently downward to Castalia's spring.
    Now, awful Pales, strike a louder tone.
  First, for the sheep soft pencotes I decree
  To browse in, till green summer's swift return;
  And that the hard earth under them with straw
  And handfuls of the fern be littered deep,
  Lest chill of ice such tender cattle harm
  With scab and loathly foot-rot. Passing thence
  I bid the goats with arbute-leaves be stored,
  And served with fresh spring-water, and their pens
  Turned southward from the blast, to face the suns
  Of winter, when Aquarius' icy beam
  Now sinks in showers upon the parting year.
  These too no lightlier our protection claim,
  Nor prove of poorer service, howsoe'er
  Milesian fleeces dipped in Tyrian reds
  Repay the barterer; these with offspring teem
  More numerous; these yield plenteous store of milk:
  The more each dry-wrung udder froths the pail,
  More copious soon the teat-pressed torrents flow.
  Ay, and on Cinyps' bank the he-goats too
  Their beards and grizzled chins and bristling hair
  Let clip for camp-use, or as rugs to wrap
  Seafaring wretches. But they browse the woods
  And summits of Lycaeus, and rough briers,
  And brakes that love the highland: of themselves
  Right heedfully the she-goats homeward troop
  Before their kids, and with plump udders clogged
  Scarce cross the threshold. Wherefore rather ye,
  The less they crave man's vigilance, be fain
  From ice to fend them and from snowy winds;
  Bring food and feast them with their branchy fare,
  Nor lock your hay-loft all the winter long.
    But when glad summer at the west wind's call
  Sends either flock to pasture in the glades,
  Soon as the day-star shineth, hie we then
  To the cool meadows, while the dawn is young,
  The grass yet hoary, and to browsing herds
  The dew tastes sweetest on the tender sward.
  When heaven's fourth hour draws on the thickening drought,
  And shrill cicalas pierce the brake with song,
  Then at the well-springs bid them, or deep pools,
  From troughs of holm-oak quaff the running wave:
  But at day's hottest seek a shadowy vale,
  Where some vast ancient-timbered oak of Jove
  Spreads his huge branches, or where huddling black
  Ilex on ilex cowers in awful shade.
  Then once more give them water sparingly,
  And feed once more, till sunset, when cool eve
  Allays the air, and dewy moonbeams slake
  The forest glades, with halcyon's song the shore,
  And every thicket with the goldfinch rings.
    Of Libya's shepherds why the tale pursue?
  Why sing their pastures and the scattered huts
  They house in? Oft their cattle day and night
  Graze the whole month together, and go forth
  Into far deserts where no shelter is,
  So flat the plain and boundless. All his goods
  The Afric swain bears with him, house and home,
  Arms, Cretan quiver, and Amyclaean dog;
  As some keen Roman in his country's arms
  Plies the swift march beneath a cruel load;
  Soon with tents pitched and at his post he stands,
  Ere looked for by the foe. Not thus the tribes
  Of Scythia by the far Maeotic wave,
  Where turbid Ister whirls his yellow sands,
  And Rhodope stretched out beneath the pole
  Comes trending backward. There the herds they keep
  Close-pent in byres, nor any grass is seen
  Upon the plain, nor leaves upon the tree:
  But with snow-ridges and deep frost afar
  Heaped seven ells high the earth lies featureless:
  Still winter? still the north wind's icy breath!
  Nay, never sun disparts the shadows pale,
  Or as he rides the steep of heaven, or dips
  In ocean's fiery bath his plunging car.
  Quick ice-crusts curdle on the running stream,
  And iron-hooped wheels the water's back now bears,
  To broad wains opened, as erewhile to ships;
  Brass vessels oft asunder burst, and clothes
  Stiffen upon the wearers; juicy wines
  They cleave with axes; to one frozen mass
  Whole pools are turned; and on their untrimmed beards
  Stiff clings the jagged icicle. Meanwhile
  All heaven no less is filled with falling snow;
  The cattle perish: oxen's mighty frames
  Stand island-like amid the frost, and stags
  In huddling herds, by that strange weight benumbed,
  Scarce top the surface with their antler-points.
  These with no hounds they hunt, nor net with toils,
  Nor scare with terror of the crimson plume;
  But, as in vain they breast the opposing block,
  Butcher them, knife in hand, and so dispatch
  Loud-bellowing, and with glad shouts hale them home.
  Themselves in deep-dug caverns underground
  Dwell free and careless; to their hearths they heave
  Oak-logs and elm-trees whole, and fire them there,
  There play the night out, and in festive glee
  With barm and service sour the wine-cup mock.
  So 'neath the seven-starred Hyperborean wain
  The folk live tameless, buffeted with blasts
  Of Eurus from Rhipaean hills, and wrap
  Their bodies in the tawny fells of beasts.
    If wool delight thee, first, be far removed
  All prickly boskage, burrs and caltrops; shun
  Luxuriant pastures; at the outset choose
  White flocks with downy fleeces. For the ram,
  How white soe'er himself, be but the tongue
  'Neath his moist palate black, reject him, lest
  He sully with dark spots his offspring's fleece,
  And seek some other o'er the teeming plain.
  Even with such snowy bribe of wool, if ear
  May trust the tale, Pan, God of Arcady,
  Snared and beguiled thee, Luna, calling thee
  To the deep woods; nor thou didst spurn his call.
    But who for milk hath longing, must himself
  Carry lucerne and lotus-leaves enow
  With salt herbs to the cote, whence more they love
  The streams, more stretch their udders, and give back
  A subtle taste of saltness in the milk.
  Many there be who from their mothers keep
  The new-born kids, and straightway bind their mouths
  With iron-tipped muzzles. What they milk at dawn,
  Or in the daylight hours, at night they press;
  What darkling or at sunset, this ere morn
  They bear away in baskets- for to town
  The shepherd hies him- or with dash of salt
  Just sprinkle, and lay by for winter use.
    Nor be thy dogs last cared for; but alike
  Swift Spartan hounds and fierce Molossian feed
  On fattening whey. Never, with these to watch,
  Dread nightly thief afold and ravening wolves,
  Or Spanish desperadoes in the rear.
  And oft the shy wild asses thou wilt chase,
  With hounds, too, hunt the hare, with hounds the doe;
  Oft from his woodland wallowing-den uprouse
  The boar, and scare him with their baying, and drive,
  And o'er the mountains urge into the toils
  Some antlered monster to their chiming cry.
    Learn also scented cedar-wood to burn
  Within the stalls, and snakes of noxious smell
  With fumes of galbanum to drive away.
  Oft under long-neglected cribs, or lurks
  A viper ill to handle, that hath fled
  The light in terror, or some snake, that wont
  'Neath shade and sheltering roof to creep, and shower
  Its bane among the cattle, hugs the ground,
  Fell scourge of kine. Shepherd, seize stakes, seize stones!
  And as he rears defiance, and puffs out
  A hissing throat, down with him! see how low
  That cowering crest is vailed in flight, the while,
  His midmost coils and final sweep of tail
  Relaxing, the last fold drags lingering spires.
  Then that vile worm that in Calabrian glades
  Uprears his breast, and wreathes a scaly back,
  His length of belly pied with mighty spots-
  While from their founts gush any streams, while yet
  With showers of Spring and rainy south-winds earth
  Is moistened, lo! he haunts the pools, and here
  Housed in the banks, with fish and chattering frogs
  Crams the black void of his insatiate maw.
  Soon as the fens are parched, and earth with heat
  Is gaping, forth he darts into the dry,
  Rolls eyes of fire and rages through the fields,
  Furious from thirst and by the drought dismayed.
  Me list not then beneath the open heaven
  To snatch soft slumber, nor on forest-ridge
  Lie stretched along the grass, when, slipped his slough,
  To glittering youth transformed he winds his spires,
  And eggs or younglings leaving in his lair,
  Towers sunward, lightening with three-forked tongue.
    Of sickness, too, the causes and the signs
  I'll teach thee. Loathly scab assails the sheep,
  When chilly showers have probed them to the quick,
  And winter stark with hoar-frost, or when sweat
  Unpurged cleaves to them after shearing done,
  And rough thorns rend their bodies. Hence it is
  Shepherds their whole flock steep in running streams,
  While, plunged beneath the flood, with drenched fell,
  The ram, launched free, goes drifting down the tide.
  Else, having shorn, they smear their bodies o'er
  With acrid oil-lees, and mix silver-scum
  And native sulphur and Idaean pitch,
  Wax mollified with ointment, and therewith
  Sea-leek, strong hellebores, bitumen black.
  Yet ne'er doth kindlier fortune crown his toil,
  Than if with blade of iron a man dare lance
  The ulcer's mouth ope: for the taint is fed
  And quickened by confinement; while the swain
  His hand of healing from the wound withholds,
  Or sits for happier signs imploring heaven.
  Aye, and when inward to the bleater's bones
  The pain hath sunk and rages, and their limbs
  By thirsty fever are consumed, 'tis good
  To draw the enkindled heat therefrom, and pierce
  Within the hoof-clefts a blood-bounding vein.
  Of tribes Bisaltic such the wonted use,
  And keen Gelonian, when to Rhodope
  He flies, or Getic desert, and quaffs milk
  With horse-blood curdled.
                         Seest one far afield
  Oft to the shade's mild covert win, or pull
  The grass tops listlessly, or hindmost lag,
  Or, browsing, cast her down amid the plain,
  At night retire belated and alone;
  With quick knife check the mischief, ere it creep
  With dire contagion through the unwary herd.
  Less thick and fast the whirlwind scours the main
  With tempest in its wake, than swarm the plagues
  Of cattle; nor seize they single lives alone,
  But sudden clear whole feeding grounds, the flock
  With all its promise, and extirpate the breed.
  Well would he trow it who, so long after, still
  High Alps and Noric hill-forts should behold,
  And Iapydian Timavus' fields,
  Ay, still behold the shepherds' realms a waste,
  And far and wide the lawns untenanted.
    Here from distempered heavens erewhile arose
  A piteous season, with the full fierce heat
  Of autumn glowed, and cattle-kindreds all
  And all wild creatures to destruction gave,
  Tainted the pools, the fodder charged with bane.
  Nor simple was the way of death, but when
  Hot thirst through every vein impelled had drawn
  Their wretched limbs together, anon o'erflowed
  A watery flux, and all their bones piecemeal
  Sapped by corruption to itself absorbed.
  Oft in mid sacrifice to heaven- the white
  Wool-woven fillet half wreathed about his brow-
  Some victim, standing by the altar, there
  Betwixt the loitering carles a-dying fell:
  Or, if betimes the slaughtering priest had struck,
  Nor with its heaped entrails blazed the pile,
  Nor seer to seeker thence could answer yield;
  Nay, scarce the up-stabbing knife with blood was stained,
  Scarce sullied with thin gore the surface-sand.
  Hence die the calves in many a pasture fair,
  Or at full cribs their lives' sweet breath resign;
  Hence on the fawning dog comes madness, hence
  Racks the sick swine a gasping cough that chokes
  With swelling at the jaws: the conquering steed,
  Uncrowned of effort and heedless of the sward,
  Faints, turns him from the springs, and paws the earth
  With ceaseless hoof: low droop his ears, wherefrom
  Bursts fitful sweat, a sweat that waxes cold
  Upon the dying beast; the skin is dry,
  And rigidly repels the handler's touch.
  These earlier signs they give that presage doom.
  But, if the advancing plague 'gin fiercer grow,
  Then are their eyes all fire, deep-drawn their breath,
  At times groan-laboured: with long sobbing heave
  Their lowest flanks; from either nostril streams
  Black blood; a rough tongue clogs the obstructed jaws.
  'Twas helpful through inverted horn to pour
  Draughts of the wine-god down; sole way it seemed
  To save the dying: soon this too proved their bane,
  And, reinvigorate but with frenzy's fire,
  Even at death's pinch- the gods some happier fate
  Deal to the just, such madness to their foes-
  Each with bared teeth his own limbs mangling tore.
  See! as he smokes beneath the stubborn share,
  The bull drops, vomiting foam-dabbled gore,
  And heaves his latest groans. Sad goes the swain,
  Unhooks the steer that mourns his fellow's fate,
  And in mid labour leaves the plough-gear fast.
  Nor tall wood's shadow, nor soft sward may stir
  That heart's emotion, nor rock-channelled flood,
  More pure than amber speeding to the plain:
  But see! his flanks fail under him, his eyes
  Are dulled with deadly torpor, and his neck
  Sinks to the earth with drooping weight. What now
  Besteads him toil or service? to have turned
  The heavy sod with ploughshare? And yet these
  Ne'er knew the Massic wine-god's baneful boon,
  Nor twice replenished banquets: but on leaves
  They fare, and virgin grasses, and their cups
  Are crystal springs and streams with running tired,
  Their healthful slumbers never broke by care.
  Then only, say they, through that country side
  For Juno's rites were cattle far to seek,
  And ill-matched buffaloes the chariots drew
  To their high fanes. So, painfully with rakes
  They grub the soil, aye, with their very nails
  Dig in the corn-seeds, and with strained neck
  O'er the high uplands drag the creaking wains.
  No wolf for ambush pries about the pen,
  Nor round the flock prowls nightly; pain more sharp
  Subdues him: the shy deer and fleet-foot stags
  With hounds now wander by the haunts of men
  Vast ocean's offspring, and all tribes that swim,
  On the shore's confine the wave washes up,
  Like shipwrecked bodies: seals, unwonted there,
  Flee to the rivers. Now the viper dies,
  For all his den's close winding, and with scales
  Erect the astonied water-worms. The air
  Brooks not the very birds, that headlong fall,
  And leave their life beneath the soaring cloud.
  Moreover now nor change of fodder serves,
  And subtlest cures but injure; then were foiled
  The masters, Chiron sprung from Phillyron,
  And Amythaon's son Melampus. See!
  From Stygian darkness launched into the light
  Comes raging pale Tisiphone; she drives
  Disease and fear before her, day by day
  Still rearing higher that all-devouring head.
  With bleat of flocks and lowings thick resound
  Rivers and parched banks and sloping heights.
  At last in crowds she slaughters them, she chokes
  The very stalls with carrion-heaps that rot
  In hideous corruption, till men learn
  With earth to cover them, in pits to hide.
  For e'en the fells are useless; nor the flesh
  With water may they purge, or tame with fire,
  Nor shear the fleeces even, gnawed through and through
  With foul disease, nor touch the putrid webs;
  But, had one dared the loathly weeds to try,
  Red blisters and an unclean sweat o'erran
  His noisome limbs, till, no long tarriance made,
  The fiery curse his tainted frame devoured.
  GEORGIC IV

  Of air-born honey, gift of heaven, I now
  Take up the tale. Upon this theme no less
  Look thou, Maecenas, with indulgent eye.
  A marvellous display of puny powers,
  High-hearted chiefs, a nation's history,
  Its traits, its bent, its battles and its clans,
  All, each, shall pass before you, while I sing.
  Slight though the poet's theme, not slight the praise,
  So frown not heaven, and Phoebus hear his call.
    First find your bees a settled sure abode,
  Where neither winds can enter (winds blow back
  The foragers with food returning home)
  Nor sheep and butting kids tread down the flowers,
  Nor heifer wandering wide upon the plain
  Dash off the dew, and bruise the springing blades.
  Let the gay lizard too keep far aloof
  His scale-clad body from their honied stalls,
  And the bee-eater, and what birds beside,
  And Procne smirched with blood upon the breast
  From her own murderous hands. For these roam wide
  Wasting all substance, or the bees themselves
  Strike flying, and in their beaks bear home, to glut
  Those savage nestlings with the dainty prey.
  But let clear springs and moss-green pools be near,
  And through the grass a streamlet hurrying run,
  Some palm-tree o'er the porch extend its shade,
  Or huge-grown oleaster, that in Spring,
  Their own sweet Spring-tide, when the new-made chiefs
  Lead forth the young swarms, and, escaped their comb,
  The colony comes forth to sport and play,
  The neighbouring bank may lure them from the heat,
  Or bough befriend with hospitable shade.
  O'er the mid-waters, whether swift or still,
  Cast willow-branches and big stones enow,
  Bridge after bridge, where they may footing find
  And spread their wide wings to the summer sun,
  If haply Eurus, swooping as they pause,
  Have dashed with spray or plunged them in the deep.
  And let green cassias and far-scented thymes,
  And savory with its heavy-laden breath
  Bloom round about, and violet-beds hard by
  Sip sweetness from the fertilizing springs.
  For the hive's self, or stitched of hollow bark,
  Or from tough osier woven, let the doors
  Be strait of entrance; for stiff winter's cold
  Congeals the honey, and heat resolves and thaws,
  To bees alike disastrous; not for naught
  So haste they to cement the tiny pores
  That pierce their walls, and fill the crevices
  With pollen from the flowers, and glean and keep
  To this same end the glue, that binds more fast
  Than bird-lime or the pitch from Ida's pines.
  Oft too in burrowed holes, if fame be true,
  They make their cosy subterranean home,
  And deeply lodged in hollow rocks are found,
  Or in the cavern of an age-hewn tree.
  Thou not the less smear round their crannied cribs
  With warm smooth mud-coat, and strew leaves above;
  But near their home let neither yew-tree grow,
  Nor reddening crabs be roasted, and mistrust
  Deep marish-ground and mire with noisome smell,
  Or where the hollow rocks sonorous ring,
  And the word spoken buffets and rebounds.
    What more? When now the golden sun has put
  Winter to headlong flight beneath the world,
  And oped the doors of heaven with summer ray,
  Forthwith they roam the glades and forests o'er,
  Rifle the painted flowers, or sip the streams,
  Light-hovering on the surface. Hence it is
  With some sweet rapture, that we know not of,
  Their little ones they foster, hence with skill
  Work out new wax or clinging honey mould.
  So when the cage-escaped hosts you see
  Float heavenward through the hot clear air, until
  You marvel at yon dusky cloud that spreads
  And lengthens on the wind, then mark them well;
  For then 'tis ever the fresh springs they seek
  And bowery shelter: hither must you bring
  The savoury sweets I bid, and sprinkle them,
  Bruised balsam and the wax-flower's lowly weed,
  And wake and shake the tinkling cymbals heard
  By the great Mother: on the anointed spots
  Themselves will settle, and in wonted wise
  Seek of themselves the cradle's inmost depth.
    But if to battle they have hied them forth-
  For oft 'twixt king and king with uproar dire
  Fierce feud arises, and at once from far
  You may discern what passion sways the mob,
  And how their hearts are throbbing for the strife;
  Hark! the hoarse brazen note that warriors know
  Chides on the loiterers, and the ear may catch
  A sound that mocks the war-trump's broken blasts;
  Then in hot haste they muster, then flash wings,
  Sharpen their pointed beaks and knit their thews,
  And round the king, even to his royal tent,
  Throng rallying, and with shouts defy the foe.
  So, when a dry Spring and clear space is given,
  Forth from the gates they burst, they clash on high;
  A din arises; they are heaped and rolled
  Into one mighty mass, and headlong fall,
  Not denselier hail through heaven, nor pelting so
  Rains from the shaken oak its acorn-shower.
  Conspicuous by their wings the chiefs themselves
  Press through the heart of battle, and display
  A giant's spirit in each pigmy frame,
  Steadfast no inch to yield till these or those
  The victor's ponderous arm has turned to flight.
  Such fiery passions and such fierce assaults
  A little sprinkled dust controls and quells.
  And now, both leaders from the field recalled,
  Who hath the worser seeming, do to death,
  Lest royal waste wax burdensome, but let
  His better lord it on the empty throne.
  One with gold-burnished flakes will shine like fire,
  For twofold are their kinds, the nobler he,
  Of peerless front and lit with flashing scales;
  That other, from neglect and squalor foul,
  Drags slow a cumbrous belly. As with kings,
  So too with people, diverse is their mould,
  Some rough and loathly, as when the wayfarer
  Scapes from a whirl of dust, and scorched with heat
  Spits forth the dry grit from his parched mouth:
  The others shine forth and flash with lightning-gleam,
  Their backs all blazoned with bright drops of gold
  Symmetric: this the likelier breed; from these,
  When heaven brings round the season, thou shalt strain
  Sweet honey, nor yet so sweet as passing clear,
  And mellowing on the tongue the wine-god's fire.
    But when the swarms fly aimlessly abroad,
  Disport themselves in heaven and spurn their cells,
  Leaving the hive unwarmed, from such vain play
  Must you refrain their volatile desires,
  Nor hard the task: tear off the monarchs' wings;
  While these prove loiterers, none beside will dare
  Mount heaven, or pluck the standards from the camp.
  Let gardens with the breath of saffron flowers
  Allure them, and the lord of Hellespont,
  Priapus, wielder of the willow-scythe,
  Safe in his keeping hold from birds and thieves.
  And let the man to whom such cares are dear
  Himself bring thyme and pine-trees from the heights,
  And strew them in broad belts about their home;
  No hand but his the blistering task should ply,
  Plant the young slips, or shed the genial showers.
    And I myself, were I not even now
  Furling my sails, and, nigh the journey's end,
  Eager to turn my vessel's prow to shore,
  Perchance would sing what careful husbandry
  Makes the trim garden smile; of Paestum too,
  Whose roses bloom and fade and bloom again;
  How endives glory in the streams they drink,
  And green banks in their parsley, and how the gourd
  Twists through the grass and rounds him to paunch;
  Nor of Narcissus had my lips been dumb,
  That loiterer of the flowers, nor supple-stemmed
  Acanthus, with the praise of ivies pale,
  And myrtles clinging to the shores they love.
  For 'neath the shade of tall Oebalia's towers,
  Where dark Galaesus laves the yellowing fields,
  An old man once I mind me to have seen-
  From Corycus he came- to whom had fallen
  Some few poor acres of neglected land,
  And they nor fruitful' neath the plodding steer,
  Meet for the grazing herd, nor good for vines.
  Yet he, the while his meagre garden-herbs
  Among the thorns he planted, and all round
  White lilies, vervains, and lean poppy set,
  In pride of spirit matched the wealth of kings,
  And home returning not till night was late,
  With unbought plenty heaped his board on high.
  He was the first to cull the rose in spring,
  He the ripe fruits in autumn; and ere yet
  Winter had ceased in sullen ire to rive
  The rocks with frost, and with her icy bit
  Curb in the running waters, there was he
  Plucking the rathe faint hyacinth, while he chid
  Summer's slow footsteps and the lagging West.
  Therefore he too with earliest brooding bees
  And their full swarms o'erflowed, and first was he
  To press the bubbling honey from the comb;
  Lime-trees were his, and many a branching pine;
  And all the fruits wherewith in early bloom
  The orchard-tree had clothed her, in full tale
  Hung there, by mellowing autumn perfected.
  He too transplanted tall-grown elms a-row,
  Time-toughened pear, thorns bursting with the plum
  And plane now yielding serviceable shade
  For dry lips to drink under: but these things,
  Shut off by rigorous limits, I pass by,
  And leave for others to sing after me.
    Come, then, I will unfold the natural powers
  Great Jove himself upon the bees bestowed,
  The boon for which, led by the shrill sweet strains
  Of the Curetes and their clashing brass,
  They fed the King of heaven in Dicte's cave.
  Alone of all things they receive and hold
  Community of offspring, and they house
  Together in one city, and beneath
  The shelter of majestic laws they live;
  And they alone fixed home and country know,
  And in the summer, warned of coming cold,
  Make proof of toil, and for the general store
  Hoard up their gathered harvesting. For some
  Watch o'er the victualling of the hive, and these
  By settled order ply their tasks afield;
  And some within the confines of their home
  Plant firm the comb's first layer, Narcissus' tear,
  And sticky gum oozed from the bark of trees,
  Then set the clinging wax to hang therefrom.
  Others the while lead forth the full-grown young,
  Their country's hope, and others press and pack
  The thrice repured honey, and stretch their cells
  To bursting with the clear-strained nectar sweet.
  Some, too, the wardship of the gates befalls,
  Who watch in turn for showers and cloudy skies,
  Or ease returning labourers of their load,
  Or form a band and from their precincts drive
  The drones, a lazy herd. How glows the work!
  How sweet the honey smells of perfumed thyme
  Like the Cyclopes, when in haste they forge
  From the slow-yielding ore the thunderbolts,
  Some from the bull's-hide bellows in and out
  Let the blasts drive, some dip i' the water-trough
  The sputtering metal: with the anvil's weight
  Groans Etna: they alternately in time
  With giant strength uplift their sinewy arms,
  Or twist the iron with the forceps' grip-
  Not otherwise, to measure small with great,
  The love of getting planted in their breasts
  Goads on the bees, that haunt old Cecrops' heights,
  Each in his sphere to labour. The old have charge
  To keep the town, and build the walled combs,
  And mould the cunning chambers; but the youth,
  Their tired legs packed with thyme, come labouring home
  Belated, for afar they range to feed
  On arbutes and the grey-green willow-leaves,
  And cassia and the crocus blushing red,
  Glue-yielding limes, and hyacinths dusky-eyed.
  One hour for rest have all, and one for toil:
  With dawn they hurry from the gates- no room
  For loiterers there: and once again, when even
  Now bids them quit their pasturing on the plain,
  Then homeward make they, then refresh their strength:
  A hum arises: hark! they buzz and buzz
  About the doors and threshold; till at length
  Safe laid to rest they hush them for the night,
  And welcome slumber laps their weary limbs.
  But from the homestead not too far they fare,
  When showers hang like to fall, nor, east winds nigh,
  Confide in heaven, but 'neath the city walls
  Safe-circling fetch them water, or essay
  Brief out-goings, and oft weigh-up tiny stones,
  As light craft ballast in the tossing tide,
  Wherewith they poise them through the cloudy vast.
  This law of life, too, by the bees obeyed,
  Will move thy wonder, that nor sex with sex
  Yoke they in marriage, nor yield their limbs to love,
  Nor know the pangs of labour, but alone
  From leaves and honied herbs, the mothers, each,
  Gather their offspring in their mouths, alone
  Supply new kings and pigmy commonwealth,
  And their old court and waxen realm repair.
  Oft, too, while wandering, against jagged stones
  Their wings they fray, and 'neath the burden yield
  Their liberal lives: so deep their love of flowers,
  So glorious deem they honey's proud acquist.
  Therefore, though each a life of narrow span,
  Ne'er stretched to summers more than seven, befalls,
  Yet deathless doth the race endure, and still
  Perennial stands the fortune of their line,
  From grandsire unto grandsire backward told.
  Moreover, not Aegyptus, nor the realm
  Of boundless Lydia, no, nor Parthia's hordes,
  Nor Median Hydaspes, to their king
  Do such obeisance: lives the king unscathed,
  One will inspires the million: is he dead,
  Snapt is the bond of fealty; they themselves
  Ravage their toil-wrought honey, and rend amain
  Their own comb's waxen trellis. He is the lord
  Of all their labour; him with awful eye
  They reverence, and with murmuring throngs surround,
  In crowds attend, oft shoulder him on high,
  Or with their bodies shield him in the fight,
  And seek through showering wounds a glorious death.
    Led by these tokens, and with such traits to guide,
  Some say that unto bees a share is given
  Of the Divine Intelligence, and to drink
  Pure draughts of ether; for God permeates all-
  Earth, and wide ocean, and the vault of heaven-
  From whom flocks, herds, men, beasts of every kind,
  Draw each at birth the fine essential flame;
  Yea, and that all things hence to Him return,
  Brought back by dissolution, nor can death
  Find place: but, each into his starry rank,
  Alive they soar, and mount the heights of heaven.
    If now their narrow home thou wouldst unseal,
  And broach the treasures of the honey-house,
  With draught of water first toment thy lips,
  And spread before thee fumes of trailing smoke.
  Twice is the teeming produce gathered in,
  Twofold their time of harvest year by year,
  Once when Taygete the Pleiad uplifts
  Her comely forehead for the earth to see,
  With foot of scorn spurning the ocean-streams,
  Once when in gloom she flies the watery Fish,
  And dips from heaven into the wintry wave.
  Unbounded then their wrath; if hurt, they breathe
  Venom into their bite, cleave to the veins
  And let the sting lie buried, and leave their lives
  Behind them in the wound. But if you dread
  Too rigorous a winter, and would fain
  Temper the coming time, and their bruised hearts
  And broken estate to pity move thy soul,
  Yet who would fear to fumigate with thyme,
  Or cut the empty wax away? for oft
  Into their comb the newt has gnawed unseen,
  And the light-loathing beetles crammed their bed,
  And he that sits at others' board to feast,
  The do-naught drone; or 'gainst the unequal foe
  Swoops the fierce hornet, or the moth's fell tribe;
  Or spider, victim of Minerva's spite,
  Athwart the doorway hangs her swaying net.
  The more impoverished they, the keenlier all
  To mend the fallen fortunes of their race
  Will nerve them, fill the cells up, tier on tier,
  And weave their granaries from the rifled flowers.
    Now, seeing that life doth even to bee-folk bring
  Our human chances, if in dire disease
  Their bodies' strength should languish- which anon
  By no uncertain tokens may be told-
  Forthwith the sick change hue; grim leanness mars
  Their visage; then from out the cells they bear
  Forms reft of light, and lead the mournful pomp;
  Or foot to foot about the porch they hang,
  Or within closed doors loiter, listless all
  From famine, and benumbed with shrivelling cold.
  Then is a deep note heard, a long-drawn hum,
  As when the chill South through the forests sighs,
  As when the troubled ocean hoarsely booms
  With back-swung billow, as ravening tide of fire
  Surges, shut fast within the furnace-walls.
  Then do I bid burn scented galbanum,
  And, honey-streams through reeden troughs instilled,
  Challenge and cheer their flagging appetite
  To taste the well-known food; and it shall boot
  To mix therewith the savour bruised from gall,
  And rose-leaves dried, or must to thickness boiled
  By a fierce fire, or juice of raisin-grapes
  From Psithian vine, and with its bitter smell
  Centaury, and the famed Cecropian thyme.
  There is a meadow-flower by country folk
  Hight star-wort; 'tis a plant not far to seek;
  For from one sod an ample growth it rears,
  Itself all golden, but girt with plenteous leaves,
  Where glory of purple shines through violet gloom.
  With chaplets woven hereof full oft are decked
  Heaven's altars: harsh its taste upon the tongue;
  Shepherds in vales smooth-shorn of nibbling flocks
  By Mella's winding waters gather it.
  The roots of this, well seethed in fragrant wine,
  Set in brimmed baskets at their doors for food.
    But if one's whole stock fail him at a stroke,
  Nor hath he whence to breed the race anew,
  'Tis time the wondrous secret to disclose
  Taught by the swain of Arcady, even how
  The blood of slaughtered bullocks oft has borne
  Bees from corruption. I will trace me back
  To its prime source the story's tangled thread,
  And thence unravel. For where thy happy folk,
  Canopus, city of Pellaean fame,
  Dwell by the Nile's lagoon-like overflow,
  And high o'er furrows they have called their own
  Skim in their painted wherries; where, hard by,
  The quivered Persian presses, and that flood
  Which from the swart-skinned Aethiop bears him down,
  Swift-parted into sevenfold branching mouths
  With black mud fattens and makes Aegypt green,
  That whole domain its welfare's hope secure
  Rests on this art alone. And first is chosen
  A strait recess, cramped closer to this end,
  Which next with narrow roof of tiles atop
  'Twixt prisoning walls they pinch, and add hereto
  From the four winds four slanting window-slits.
  Then seek they from the herd a steer, whose horns
  With two years' growth are curling, and stop fast,
  Plunge madly as he may, the panting mouth
  And nostrils twain, and done with blows to death,
  Batter his flesh to pulp i' the hide yet whole,
  And shut the doors, and leave him there to lie.
  But 'neath his ribs they scatter broken boughs,
  With thyme and fresh-pulled cassias: this is done
  When first the west winds bid the waters flow,
  Ere flush the meadows with new tints, and ere
  The twittering swallow buildeth from the beams.
  Meanwhile the juice within his softened bones
  Heats and ferments, and things of wondrous birth,
  Footless at first, anon with feet and wings,
  Swarm there and buzz, a marvel to behold;
  And more and more the fleeting breeze they take,
  Till, like a shower that pours from summer-clouds,
  Forth burst they, or like shafts from quivering string
  When Parthia's flying hosts provoke the fray.
    Say what was he, what God, that fashioned forth
  This art for us, O Muses? of man's skill
  Whence came the new adventure? From thy vale,
  Peneian Tempe, turning, bee-bereft,
  So runs the tale, by famine and disease,
  Mournful the shepherd Aristaeus stood
  Fast by the haunted river-head, and thus
  With many a plaint to her that bare him cried:
  "Mother, Cyrene, mother, who hast thy home
  Beneath this whirling flood, if he thou sayest,
  Apollo, lord of Thymbra, be my sire,
  Sprung from the Gods' high line, why barest thou me
  With fortune's ban for birthright? Where is now
  Thy love to me-ward banished from thy breast?
  O! wherefore didst thou bid me hope for heaven?
  Lo! even the crown of this poor mortal life,
  Which all my skilful care by field and fold,
  No art neglected, scarce had fashioned forth,
  Even this falls from me, yet thou call'st me son.
  Nay, then, arise! With thine own hands pluck up
  My fruit-plantations: on the homestead fling
  Pitiless fire; make havoc of my crops;
  Burn the young plants, and wield the stubborn axe
  Against my vines, if there hath taken the
  Such loathing of my greatness." But that cry,
  Even from her chamber in the river-deeps,
  His mother heard: around her spun the nymphs
  Milesian wool stained through with hyaline dye,
  Drymo, Xantho, Ligea, Phyllodoce,
  Their glossy locks o'er snowy shoulders shed,
  Cydippe and Lycorias yellow-haired,
  A maiden one, one newly learned even then
  To bear Lucina's birth-pang. Clio, too,
  And Beroe, sisters, ocean-children both,
  Both zoned with gold and girt with dappled fell,
  Ephyre and Opis, and from Asian meads
  Deiopea, and, bow at length laid by,
  Fleet-footed Arethusa. But in their midst
  Fair Clymene was telling o'er the tale
  Of Vulcan's idle vigilance and the stealth
  Of Mars' sweet rapine, and from Chaos old
  Counted the jostling love-joys of the Gods.
  Charmed by whose lay, the while their woolly tasks
  With spindles down they drew, yet once again
  Smote on his mother's ears the mournful plaint
  Of Aristaeus; on their glassy thrones
  Amazement held them all; but Arethuse
  Before the rest put forth her auburn head,
  Peering above the wave-top, and from far
  Exclaimed, "Cyrene, sister, not for naught
  Scared by a groan so deep, behold! 'tis he,
  Even Aristaeus, thy heart's fondest care,
  Here by the brink of the Peneian sire
  Stands woebegone and weeping, and by name
  Cries out upon thee for thy cruelty."
  To whom, strange terror knocking at her heart,
  "Bring, bring him to our sight," the mother cried;
  "His feet may tread the threshold even of Gods."
  So saying, she bids the flood yawn wide and yield
  A pathway for his footsteps; but the wave
  Arched mountain-wise closed round him, and within
  Its mighty bosom welcomed, and let speed
  To the deep river-bed. And now, with eyes
  Of wonder gazing on his mother's hall
  And watery kingdom and cave-prisoned pools
  And echoing groves, he went, and, stunned by that
  Stupendous whirl of waters, separate saw
  All streams beneath the mighty earth that glide,
  Phasis and Lycus, and that fountain-head
  Whence first the deep Enipeus leaps to light,
  Whence father Tiber, and whence Anio's flood,
  And Hypanis that roars amid his rocks,
  And Mysian Caicus, and, bull-browed
  'Twixt either gilded horn, Eridanus,
  Than whom none other through the laughing plains
  More furious pours into the purple sea.
  Soon as the chamber's hanging roof of stone
  Was gained, and now Cyrene from her son
  Had heard his idle weeping, in due course
  Clear water for his hands the sisters bring,
  With napkins of shorn pile, while others heap
  The board with dainties, and set on afresh
  The brimming goblets; with Panchaian fires
  Upleap the altars; then the mother spake,
  "Take beakers of Maconian wine," she said,
  "Pour we to Ocean." Ocean, sire of all,
  She worships, and the sister-nymphs who guard
  The hundred forests and the hundred streams;
  Thrice Vesta's fire with nectar clear she dashed,
  Thrice to the roof-top shot the flame and shone:
  Armed with which omen she essayed to speak:
  "In Neptune's gulf Carpathian dwells a seer,
  Caerulean Proteus, he who metes the main
  With fish-drawn chariot of two-footed steeds;
  Now visits he his native home once more,
  Pallene and the Emathian ports; to him
  We nymphs do reverence, ay, and Nereus old;
  For all things knows the seer, both those which are
  And have been, or which time hath yet to bring;
  So willed it Neptune, whose portentous flocks,
  And loathly sea-calves 'neath the surge he feeds.
  Him first, my son, behoves thee seize and bind
  That he may all the cause of sickness show,
  And grant a prosperous end. For save by force
  No rede will he vouchsafe, nor shalt thou bend
  His soul by praying; whom once made captive, ply
  With rigorous force and fetters; against these
  His wiles will break and spend themselves in vain.
  I, when the sun has lit his noontide fires,
  When the blades thirst, and cattle love the shade,
  Myself will guide thee to the old man's haunt,
  Whither he hies him weary from the waves,
  That thou mayst safelier steal upon his sleep.
  But when thou hast gripped him fast with hand and gyve,
  Then divers forms and bestial semblances
  Shall mock thy grasp; for sudden he will change
  To bristly boar, fell tigress, dragon scaled,
  And tawny-tufted lioness, or send forth
  A crackling sound of fire, and so shake of
  The fetters, or in showery drops anon
  Dissolve and vanish. But the more he shifts
  His endless transformations, thou, my son,
  More straitlier clench the clinging bands, until
  His body's shape return to that thou sawest,
  When with closed eyelids first he sank to sleep."
    So saying, an odour of ambrosial dew
  She sheds around, and all his frame therewith
  Steeps throughly; forth from his trim-combed locks
  Breathed effluence sweet, and a lithe vigour leapt
  Into his limbs. There is a cavern vast
  Scooped in the mountain-side, where wave on wave
  By the wind's stress is driven, and breaks far up
  Its inmost creeks- safe anchorage from of old
  For tempest-taken mariners: therewithin,
  Behind a rock's huge barrier, Proteus hides.
  Here in close covert out of the sun's eye
  The youth she places, and herself the while
  Swathed in a shadowy mist stands far aloof.
  And now the ravening dog-star that burns up
  The thirsty Indians blazed in heaven; his course
  The fiery sun had half devoured: the blades
  Were parched, and the void streams with droughty jaws
  Baked to their mud-beds by the scorching ray,
  When Proteus seeking his accustomed cave
  Strode from the billows: round him frolicking
  The watery folk that people the waste sea
  Sprinkled the bitter brine-dew far and wide.
  Along the shore in scattered groups to feed
  The sea-calves stretch them: while the seer himself,
  Like herdsman on the hills when evening bids
  The steers from pasture to their stall repair,
  And the lambs' bleating whets the listening wolves,
  Sits midmost on the rock and tells his tale.
  But Aristaeus, the foe within his clutch,
  Scarce suffering him compose his aged limbs,
  With a great cry leapt on him, and ere he rose
  Forestalled him with the fetters; he nathless,
  All unforgetful of his ancient craft,
  Transforms himself to every wondrous thing,
  Fire and a fearful beast, and flowing stream.
  But when no trickery found a path for flight,
  Baffled at length, to his own shape returned,
  With human lips he spake, "Who bade thee, then,
  So reckless in youth's hardihood, affront
  Our portals? or what wouldst thou hence?"- But he,
  "Proteus, thou knowest, of thine own heart thou knowest;
  For thee there is no cheating, but cease thou
  To practise upon me: at heaven's behest
  I for my fainting fortunes hither come
  An oracle to ask thee." There he ceased.
  Whereat the seer, by stubborn force constrained,
  Shot forth the grey light of his gleaming eyes
  Upon him, and with fiercely gnashing teeth
  Unlocks his lips to spell the fates of heaven:
    "Doubt not 'tis wrath divine that plagues thee thus,
  Nor light the debt thou payest; 'tis Orpheus' self,
  Orpheus unhappy by no fault of his,
  So fates prevent not, fans thy penal fires,
  Yet madly raging for his ravished bride.
  She in her haste to shun thy hot pursuit
  Along the stream, saw not the coming death,
  Where at her feet kept ward upon the bank
  In the tall grass a monstrous water-snake.
  But with their cries the Dryad-band her peers
  Filled up the mountains to their proudest peaks:
  Wailed for her fate the heights of Rhodope,
  And tall Pangaea, and, beloved of Mars,
  The land that bowed to Rhesus, Thrace no less
  With Hebrus' stream; and Orithyia wept,
  Daughter of Acte old. But Orpheus' self,
  Soothing his love-pain with the hollow shell,
  Thee his sweet wife on the lone shore alone,
  Thee when day dawned and when it died he sang.
  Nay to the jaws of Taenarus too he came,
  Of Dis the infernal palace, and the grove
  Grim with a horror of great darkness- came,
  Entered, and faced the Manes and the King
  Of terrors, the stone heart no prayer can tame.
  Then from the deepest deeps of Erebus,
  Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades
  Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms
  Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie
  To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour
  Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;
  Matrons and men, and great heroic frames
  Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls,
  Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes.
  Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed,
  Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp
  Of dull dead water, and, to pen them fast,
  Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.
  Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death
  Stood lost in wonderment, and the Eumenides,
  Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined;
  Even Cerberus held his triple jaws agape,
  And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still.
  And now with homeward footstep he had passed
  All perils scathless, and, at length restored,
  Eurydice to realms of upper air
  Had well-nigh won, behind him following-
  So Proserpine had ruled it- when his heart
  A sudden mad desire surprised and seized-
  Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive.
  For at the very threshold of the day,
  Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve,
  He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice
  His own once more. But even with the look,
  Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond
  Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard
  Three times like thunder in the meres of hell.
  'Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought
  On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again
  The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep
  Closes my swimming eyes. And now farewell:
  Girt with enormous night I am borne away,
  Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more,
  These helpless hands.' She spake, and suddenly,
  Like smoke dissolving into empty air,
  Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him
  Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak,
  Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time
  Hell's boatman brooks he pass the watery bar.
  What should he do? fly whither, twice bereaved?
  Move with what tears the Manes, with what voice
  The Powers of darkness? She indeed even now
  Death-cold was floating on the Stygian barge!
  For seven whole months unceasingly, men say,
  Beneath a skyey crag, by thy lone wave,
  Strymon, he wept, and in the caverns chill
  Unrolled his story, melting tigers' hearts,
  And leading with his lay the oaks along.
  As in the poplar-shade a nightingale
  Mourns her lost young, which some relentless swain,
  Spying, from the nest has torn unfledged, but she
  Wails the long night, and perched upon a spray
  With sad insistence pipes her dolorous strain,
  Till all the region with her wrongs o'erflows.
  No love, no new desire, constrained his soul:
  By snow-bound Tanais and the icy north,
  Far steppes to frost Rhipaean forever wed,
  Alone he wandered, lost Eurydice
  Lamenting, and the gifts of Dis ungiven.
  Scorned by which tribute the Ciconian dames,
  Amid their awful Bacchanalian rites
  And midnight revellings, tore him limb from limb,
  And strewed his fragments over the wide fields.
  Then too, even then, what time the Hebrus stream,
  Oeagrian Hebrus, down mid-current rolled,
  Rent from the marble neck, his drifting head,
  The death-chilled tongue found yet a voice to cry
  'Eurydice! ah! poor Eurydice!'
  With parting breath he called her, and the banks
  From the broad stream caught up 'Eurydice!'"
    So Proteus ending plunged into the deep,
  And, where he plunged, beneath the eddying whirl
  Churned into foam the water, and was gone;
  But not Cyrene, who unquestioned thus
  Bespake the trembling listener: "Nay, my son,
  From that sad bosom thou mayst banish care:
  Hence came that plague of sickness, hence the nymphs,
  With whom in the tall woods the dance she wove,
  Wrought on thy bees, alas! this deadly bane.
  Bend thou before the Dell-nymphs, gracious powers:
  Bring gifts, and sue for pardon: they will grant
  Peace to thine asking, and an end of wrath.
  But how to approach them will I first unfold-
  Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk,
  That browse to-day the green Lycaean heights,
  Pick from thy herds, as many kine to match,
  Whose necks the yoke pressed never: then for these
  Build up four altars by the lofty fanes,
  And from their throats let gush the victims' blood,
  And in the greenwood leave their bodies lone.
  Then, when the ninth dawn hath displayed its beams,
  To Orpheus shalt thou send his funeral dues,
  Poppies of Lethe, and let slay a sheep
  Coal-black, then seek the grove again, and soon
  For pardon found adore Eurydice
  With a slain calf for victim."
                         No delay:
  The self-same hour he hies him forth to do
  His mother's bidding: to the shrine he came,
  The appointed altars reared, and thither led
  Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk,
  With kine to match, that never yoke had known;
  Then, when the ninth dawn had led in the day,
  To Orpheus sent his funeral dues, and sought
  The grove once more. But sudden, strange to tell
  A portent they espy: through the oxen's flesh,
  Waxed soft in dissolution, hark! there hum
  Bees from the belly; the rent ribs overboil
  In endless clouds they spread them, till at last
  On yon tree-top together fused they cling,
  And drop their cluster from the bending boughs.
    So sang I of the tilth of furrowed fields,
  Of flocks and trees, while Caesar's majesty
  Launched forth the levin-bolts of war by deep
  Euphrates, and bare rule o'er willing folk
  Though vanquished, and essayed the heights of heaven.
  I Virgil then, of sweet Parthenope
  The nursling, wooed the flowery walks of peace
  Inglorious, who erst trilled for shepherd-wights
  The wanton ditty, and sang in saucy youth
  Thee, Tityrus, 'neath the spreading beech tree's shade.


                               -THE END-