Georgics

Virgil

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

  1. Thus far the tilth of fields and stars of heaven;
  2. Now will I sing thee, Bacchus, and, with thee,
  3. The forest's young plantations and the fruit
  4. Of slow-maturing olive. Hither haste,
  5. O Father of the wine-press; all things here
  6. Teem with the bounties of thy hand; for thee
  7. With viny autumn laden blooms the field,
  8. And foams the vintage high with brimming vats;
  9. Hither, O Father of the wine-press, come,
  10. And stripped of buskin stain thy bared limbs
  11. In the new must with me.
  1. First, nature's law
  2. For generating trees is manifold;
  3. For some of their own force spontaneous spring,
  4. No hand of man compelling, and possess
  5. The plains and river-windings far and wide,
  6. As pliant osier and the bending broom,
  7. Poplar, and willows in wan companies
  8. With green leaf glimmering gray; and some there be
  9. From chance-dropped seed that rear them, as the tall
  10. Chestnuts, and, mightiest of the branching wood,
  11. Jove's Aesculus, and oaks, oracular
  12. Deemed by the Greeks of old. With some sprouts forth
  13. A forest of dense suckers from the root,
  14. As elms and cherries; so, too, a pigmy plant,
  15. Beneath its mother's mighty shade upshoots
  16. The bay-tree of Parnassus. Such the modes
  17. Nature imparted first; hence all the race
  18. Of forest-trees and shrubs and sacred groves
  19. Springs into verdure. Other means there are,
  20. Which use by method for itself acquired.
  21. One, sliving suckers from the tender frame
  22. Of the tree-mother, plants them in the trench;
  23. One buries the bare stumps within his field,
  24. Truncheons cleft four-wise, or sharp-pointed stakes;
  25. Some forest-trees the layer's bent arch await,
  26. And slips yet quick within the parent-soil;
  27. No root need others, nor doth the pruner's hand
  28. Shrink to restore the topmost shoot to earth
  29. That gave it being. Nay, marvellous to tell,
  30. Lopped of its limbs, the olive, a mere stock,
  31. Still thrusts its root out from the sapless wood,
  32. And oft the branches of one kind we see
  33. Change to another's with no loss to rue,
  34. Pear-tree transformed the ingrafted apple yield,
  35. And stony cornels on the plum-tree blush.
  1. Come then, and learn what tilth to each belongs
  2. According to their kinds, ye husbandmen,
  3. And tame with culture the wild fruits, lest earth
  4. Lie idle. O blithe to make all Ismarus
  5. One forest of the wine-god, and to clothe
  6. With olives huge Tabernus! And be thou
  7. At hand, and with me ply the voyage of toil
  8. I am bound on, O my glory, O thou that art
  9. Justly the chiefest portion of my fame,
  10. Maecenas, and on this wide ocean launched
  11. Spread sail like wings to waft thee. Not that I
  12. With my poor verse would comprehend the whole,
  13. Nay, though a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths
  14. Were mine, a voice of iron; be thou at hand,
  15. Skirt but the nearer coast-line; see the shore
  16. Is in our grasp; not now with feigned song
  17. Through winding bouts and tedious preludings
  18. Shall I detain thee.
  1. Those that lift their head
  2. Into the realms of light spontaneously,
  3. Fruitless indeed, but blithe and strenuous spring,
  4. Since Nature lurks within the soil. And yet
  5. Even these, should one engraft them, or transplant
  6. To well-drilled trenches, will anon put of
  7. Their woodland temper, and, by frequent tilth,
  8. To whatso craft thou summon them, make speed
  9. To follow. So likewise will the barren shaft
  10. That from the stock-root issueth, if it be
  11. Set out with clear space amid open fields:
  12. Now the tree-mother's towering leaves and boughs
  13. Darken, despoil of increase as it grows,
  14. And blast it in the bearing. Lastly, that
  15. Which from shed seed ariseth, upward wins
  16. But slowly, yielding promise of its shade
  17. To late-born generations; apples wane
  18. Forgetful of their former juice, the grape
  19. Bears sorry clusters, for the birds a prey.
  20. Soothly on all must toil be spent, and all
  21. Trained to the trench and at great cost subdued.
  22. But reared from truncheons olives answer best,
  23. As vines from layers, and from the solid wood
  24. The Paphian myrtles; while from suckers spring
  25. Both hardy hazels and huge ash, the tree
  26. That rims with shade the brows of Hercules,
  27. And acorns dear to the Chaonian sire:
  28. So springs the towering palm too, and the fir
  29. Destined to spy the dangers of the deep.
  30. But the rough arbutus with walnut-fruit
  31. Is grafted; so have barren planes ere now
  32. Stout apples borne, with chestnut-flower the beech,
  33. The mountain-ash with pear-bloom whitened o'er,
  34. And swine crunched acorns 'neath the boughs of elms.
  1. Nor is the method of inserting eyes
  2. And grafting one: for where the buds push forth
  3. Amidst the bark, and burst the membranes thin,
  4. Even on the knot a narrow rift is made,
  5. Wherein from some strange tree a germ they pen,
  6. And to the moist rind bid it cleave and grow.
  7. Or, otherwise, in knotless trunks is hewn
  8. A breach, and deep into the solid grain
  9. A path with wedges cloven; then fruitful slips
  10. Are set herein, and—no long time—behold!
  11. To heaven upshot with teeming boughs, the tree
  12. Strange leaves admires and fruitage not its own.