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