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