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