Georgics
Virgil
Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
- Now while yet
- The leaves are in their first fresh infant growth,
- Forbear their frailty, and while yet the bough
- Shoots joyfully toward heaven, with loosened rein
- Launched on the void, assail it not as yet
- With keen-edged sickle, but let the leaves alone
- Be culled with clip of fingers here and there.
- But when they clasp the elms with sturdy trunks
- Erect, then strip the leaves off, prune the boughs;
- Sooner they shrink from steel, but then put forth
- The arm of power, and stem the branchy tide.
- Hedges too must be woven and all beasts
- Barred entrance, chiefly while the leaf is young
- And witless of disaster; for therewith,
- Beside harsh winters and o'erpowering sun,
- Wild buffaloes and pestering goats for ay
- Besport them, sheep and heifers glut their greed.
- Nor cold by hoar-frost curdled, nor the prone
- Dead weight of summer upon the parched crags,
- So scathe it, as the flocks with venom-bite
- Of their hard tooth, whose gnawing scars the stem.
- For no offence but this to Bacchus bleeds
- The goat at every altar, and old plays
- Upon the stage find entrance; therefore too
- The sons of Theseus through the country-side—
- Hamlet and crossway—set the prize of wit,
- And on the smooth sward over oiled skins
- Dance in their tipsy frolic. Furthermore
- The Ausonian swains, a race from Troy derived,
- Make merry with rough rhymes and boisterous mirth,
- Grim masks of hollowed bark assume, invoke
- Thee with glad hymns, O Bacchus, and to thee
- Hang puppet-faces on tall pines to swing.
- Hence every vineyard teems with mellowing fruit,
- Till hollow vale o'erflows, and gorge profound,
- Where'er the god hath turned his comely head.
- Therefore to Bacchus duly will we sing
- Meet honour with ancestral hymns, and cates
- And dishes bear him; and the doomed goat
- Led by the horn shall at the altar stand,
- Whose entrails rich on hazel-spits we'll roast.
- This further task again, to dress the vine,
- Hath needs beyond exhausting; the whole soil
- Thrice, four times, yearly must be cleft, the sod
- With hoes reversed be crushed continually,
- The whole plantation lightened of its leaves.
- Round on the labourer spins the wheel of toil,
- As on its own track rolls the circling year.
- Soon as the vine her lingering leaves hath shed,
- And the chill north wind from the forests shook
- Their coronal, even then the careful swain
- Looks keenly forward to the coming year,
- With Saturn's curved fang pursues and prunes
- The vine forlorn, and lops it into shape.
- Be first to dig the ground up, first to clear
- And burn the refuse-branches, first to house
- Again your vine-poles, last to gather fruit.
- Twice doth the thickening shade beset the vine,
- Twice weeds with stifling briers o'ergrow the crop;
- And each a toilsome labour. Do thou praise
- Broad acres, farm but few. Rough twigs beside
- Of butcher's broom among the woods are cut,
- And reeds upon the river-banks, and still
- The undressed willow claims thy fostering care.
- So now the vines are fettered, now the trees
- Let go the sickle, and the last dresser now
- Sings of his finished rows; but still the ground
- Must vexed be, the dust be stirred, and heaven
- Still set thee trembling for the ripened grapes.
- Not so with olives; small husbandry need they,
- Nor look for sickle bowed or biting rake,
- When once they have gripped the soil, and borne the breeze.
- Earth of herself, with hooked fang laid bare,
- Yields moisture for the plants, and heavy fruit,
- The ploughshare aiding; therewithal thou'lt rear
- The olive's fatness well-beloved of Peace.
- 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.
- Thee too, great Pales, will I hymn, and thee,
- Amphrysian shepherd, worthy to be sung,
- You, woods and waves Lycaean. All themes beside,
- Which else had charmed the vacant mind with song,
- Are now waxed common. Of harsh Eurystheus who
- The story knows not, or that praiseless king
- Busiris, and his altars? or by whom
- Hath not the tale been told of Hylas young,
- Latonian Delos and Hippodame,
- And Pelops for his ivory shoulder famed,
- Keen charioteer? Needs must a path be tried,
- By which I too may lift me from the dust,
- And float triumphant through the mouths of men.
- Yea, I shall be the first, so life endure,
- To lead the Muses with me, as I pass
- To mine own country from the Aonian height;
- I, Mantua, first will bring thee back the palms
- Of Idumaea, and raise a marble shrine
- On thy green plain fast by the water-side,
- Where Mincius winds more vast in lazy coils,
- And rims his margent with the tender reed.
- Amid my shrine shall Caesar's godhead dwell.
- To him will I, as victor, bravely dight
- In Tyrian purple, drive along the bank
- A hundred four-horse cars. All Greece for me,
- Leaving Alpheus and Molorchus' grove,
- On foot shall strive, or with the raw-hide glove;
- Whilst I, my head with stripped green olive crowned,
- Will offer gifts. Even 'tis present joy
- To lead the high processions to the fane,
- And view the victims felled; or how the scene
- Sunders with shifted face, and Britain's sons
- Inwoven thereon with those proud curtains rise.
- Of gold and massive ivory on the doors
- I'll trace the battle of the Gangarides,
- And our Quirinus' conquering arms, and there
- Surging with war, and hugely flowing, the Nile,
- And columns heaped on high with naval brass.
- And Asia's vanquished cities I will add,
- And quelled Niphates, and the Parthian foe,
- Who trusts in flight and backward-volleying darts,
- And trophies torn with twice triumphant hand
- From empires twain on ocean's either shore.
- And breathing forms of Parian marble there
- Shall stand, the offspring of Assaracus,
- And great names of the Jove-descended folk,
- And father Tros, and Troy's first founder, lord
- Of Cynthus. And accursed Envy there
- Shall dread the Furies, and thy ruthless flood,
- Cocytus, and Ixion's twisted snakes,
- And that vast wheel and ever-baffling stone.
- Meanwhile the Dryad-haunted woods and lawns
- Unsullied seek we; 'tis thy hard behest,
- Maecenas. Without thee no lofty task
- My mind essays. Up! break the sluggish bonds
- Of tarriance; with loud din Cithaeron calls,
- Steed-taming Epidaurus, and thy hounds,
- Taygete; and hark! the assenting groves
- With peal on peal reverberate the roar.
- Yet must I gird me to rehearse ere long
- The fiery fights of Caesar, speed his name
- Through ages, countless as to Caesar's self
- From the first birth-dawn of Tithonus old.
- If eager for the prized Olympian palm
- One breed the horse, or bullock strong to plough,
- Be his prime care a shapely dam to choose.
- Of kine grim-faced is goodliest, with coarse head
- And burly neck, whose hanging dewlaps reach
- From chin to knee; of boundless length her flank;
- Large every way she is, large-footed even,
- With incurved horns and shaggy ears beneath.
- Nor let mislike me one with spots of white
- Conspicuous, or that spurns the yoke, whose horn
- At times hath vice in't: liker bull-faced she,
- And tall-limbed wholly, and with tip of tail
- Brushing her footsteps as she walks along.
- The age for Hymen's rites, Lucina's pangs,
- Ere ten years ended, after four begins;
- Their residue of days nor apt to teem,
- Nor strong for ploughing. Meantime, while youth's delight
- Survives within them, loose the males: be first
- To speed thy herds of cattle to their loves,
- Breed stock with stock, and keep the race supplied.
- Ah! life's best hours are ever first to fly
- From hapless mortals; in their place succeed
- Disease and dolorous eld; till travail sore
- And death unpitying sweep them from the scene.
- Still will be some, whose form thou fain wouldst change;
- Renew them still; with yearly choice of young
- Preventing losses, lest too late thou rue.
- Nor steeds crave less selection; but on those
- Thou think'st to rear, the promise of their line,
- From earliest youth thy chiefest pains bestow.
- See from the first yon high-bred colt afield,
- His lofty step, his limbs' elastic tread:
- Dauntless he leads the herd, still first to try
- The threatening flood, or brave the unknown bridge,
- By no vain noise affrighted; lofty-necked,
- With clean-cut head, short belly, and stout back;
- His sprightly breast exuberant with brawn.
- Chestnut and grey are good; the worst-hued white
- And sorrel. Then lo! if arms are clashed afar,
- Bide still he cannot: ears stiffen and limbs quake;
- His nostrils snort and roll out wreaths of fire.
- Dense is his mane, that when uplifted falls
- On his right shoulder; betwixt either loin
- The spine runs double; his earth-dinting hoof
- Rings with the ponderous beat of solid horn.
- Even such a horse was Cyllarus, reined and tamed
- By Pollux of Amyclae; such the pair
- In Grecian song renowned, those steeds of Mars,
- And famed Achilles' team: in such-like form
- Great Saturn's self with mane flung loose on neck
- Sped at his wife's approach, and flying filled
- The heights of Pelion with his piercing neigh.
- Even him, when sore disease or sluggish eld
- Now saps his strength, pen fast at home, and spare
- His not inglorious age. A horse grown old
- Slow kindling unto love in vain prolongs
- The fruitless task, and, to the encounter come,
- As fire in stubble blusters without strength,
- He rages idly. Therefore mark thou first
- Their age and mettle, other points anon,
- As breed and lineage, or what pain was theirs
- To lose the race, what pride the palm to win.
- Seest how the chariots in mad rivalry
- Poured from the barrier grip the course and go,
- When youthful hope is highest, and every heart
- Drained with each wild pulsation? How they ply
- The circling lash, and reaching forward let
- The reins hang free! Swift spins the glowing wheel;
- And now they stoop, and now erect in air
- Seem borne through space and towering to the sky:
- No stop, no stay; the dun sand whirls aloft;
- They reek with foam-flakes and pursuing breath;
- So sweet is fame, so prized the victor's palm.
- 'Twas Ericthonius first took heart to yoke
- Four horses to his car, and rode above
- The whirling wheels to victory: but the ring
- And bridle-reins, mounted on horses' backs,
- The Pelethronian Lapithae bequeathed,
- And taught the knight in arms to spurn the ground,
- And arch the upgathered footsteps of his pride.
- Each task alike is arduous, and for each
- A horse young, fiery, swift of foot, they seek;
- How oft so-e'er yon rival may have chased
- The flying foe, or boast his native plain
- Epirus, or Mycenae's stubborn hold,
- And trace his lineage back to Neptune's birth.
- These points regarded, as the time draws nigh,
- With instant zeal they lavish all their care
- To plump with solid fat the chosen chief
- And designated husband of the herd:
- And flowery herbs they cut, and serve him well
- With corn and running water, that his strength
- Not fail him for that labour of delight,
- Nor puny colts betray the feeble sire.
- The herd itself of purpose they reduce
- To leanness, and when love's sweet longing first
- Provokes them, they forbid the leafy food,
- And pen them from the springs, and oft beside
- With running shake, and tire them in the sun,
- What time the threshing-floor groans heavily
- With pounding of the corn-ears, and light chaff
- Is whirled on high to catch the rising west.
- This do they that the soil's prolific powers
- May not be dulled by surfeiting, nor choke
- The sluggish furrows, but eagerly absorb
- Their fill of love, and deeply entertain.
- To care of sire the mother's care succeeds.
- When great with young they wander nigh their time,
- Let no man suffer them to drag the yoke
- In heavy wains, nor leap across the way,
- Nor scour the meads, nor swim the rushing flood.
- In lonely lawns they feed them, by the course
- Of brimming streams, where moss is, and the banks
- With grass are greenest, where are sheltering caves,
- And far outstretched the rock-flung shadow lies.
- Round wooded Silarus and the ilex-bowers
- Of green Alburnus swarms a winged pest—
- Its Roman name Asilus, by the Greeks
- Termed Oestros—fierce it is, and harshly hums,
- Driving whole herds in terror through the groves,
- Till heaven is madded by their bellowing din,
- And Tanager's dry bed and forest-banks.
- With this same scourge did Juno wreak of old
- The terrors of her wrath, a plague devised
- Against the heifer sprung from Inachus.
- From this too thou, since in the noontide heats
- 'Tis most persistent, fend thy teeming herds,
- And feed them when the sun is newly risen,
- Or the first stars are ushering in the night.
- But, yeaning ended, all their tender care
- Is to the calves transferred; at once with marks
- They brand them, both to designate their race,
- And which to rear for breeding, or devote
- As altar-victims, or to cleave the ground
- And into ridges tear and turn the sod.
- The rest along the greensward graze at will.
- Those that to rustic uses thou wouldst mould,
- As calves encourage and take steps to tame,
- While pliant wills and plastic youth allow.
- And first of slender withies round the throat
- Loose collars hang, then when their free-born necks
- Are used to service, with the self-same bands
- Yoke them in pairs, and steer by steer compel
- Keep pace together. And time it is that oft
- Unfreighted wheels be drawn along the ground
- Behind them, as to dint the surface-dust;
- Then let the beechen axle strain and creak
- 'Neath some stout burden, whilst a brazen pole
- Drags on the wheels made fast thereto. Meanwhile
- For their unbroken youth not grass alone,
- Nor meagre willow-leaves and marish-sedge,
- But corn-ears with thy hand pluck from the crops.
- Nor shall the brood-kine, as of yore, for thee
- Brim high the snowy milking-pail, but spend
- Their udders' fullness on their own sweet young.