Georgics
Virgil
Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
- 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.