Georgics
Virgil
Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
- Nor of one kind alone are sturdy elms,
- Willow and lotus, nor the cypress-trees
- Of Ida; nor of self-same fashion spring
- Fat olives, orchades, and radii
- And bitter-berried pausians, no, nor yet
- Apples and the forests of Alcinous;
- Nor from like cuttings are Crustumian pears
- And Syrian, and the heavy hand-fillers.
- Not the same vintage from our trees hangs down,
- Which Lesbos from Methymna's tendril plucks.
- Vines Thasian are there, Mareotids white,
- These apt for richer soils, for lighter those:
- Psithian for raisin-wine more useful, thin
- Lageos, that one day will try the feet
- And tie the tongue: purples and early-ripes,
- And how, O Rhaetian, shall I hymn thy praise?
- Yet cope not therefore with Falernian bins.
- Vines Aminaean too, best-bodied wine,
- To which the Tmolian bows him, ay, and king
- Phanaeus too, and, lesser of that name,
- Argitis, wherewith not a grape can vie
- For gush of wine-juice or for length of years.
- Nor thee must I pass over, vine of Rhodes,
- Welcomed by gods and at the second board,
- Nor thee, Bumastus, with plump clusters swollen.
- But lo! how many kinds, and what their names,
- There is no telling, nor doth it boot to tell;
- Who lists to know it, he too would list to learn
- How many sand-grains are by Zephyr tossed
- On Libya's plain, or wot, when Eurus falls
- With fury on the ships, how many waves
- Come rolling shoreward from the Ionian sea.
- Not that all soils can all things bear alike.
- Willows by water-courses have their birth,
- Alders in miry fens; on rocky heights
- The barren mountain-ashes; on the shore
- Myrtles throng gayest; Bacchus, lastly, loves
- The bare hillside, and yews the north wind's chill.
- Mark too the earth by outland tillers tamed,
- And Eastern homes of Arabs, and tattooed
- Geloni; to all trees their native lands
- Allotted are; no clime but India bears
- Black ebony; the branch of frankincense
- Is Saba's sons' alone; why tell to thee
- Of balsams oozing from the perfumed wood,
- Or berries of acanthus ever green?
- Of Aethiop forests hoar with downy wool,
- Or how the Seres comb from off the leaves
- Their silky fleece? Of groves which India bears,
- Ocean's near neighbour, earth's remotest nook,
- Where not an arrow-shot can cleave the air
- Above their tree-tops? yet no laggards they,
- When girded with the quiver! Media yields
- The bitter juices and slow-lingering taste
- Of the blest citron-fruit, than which no aid
- Comes timelier, when fierce step-dames drug the cup
- With simples mixed and spells of baneful power,
- To drive the deadly poison from the limbs.
- Large the tree's self in semblance like a bay,
- And, showered it not a different scent abroad,
- A bay it had been; for no wind of heaven
- Its foliage falls; the flower, none faster, clings;
- With it the Medes for sweetness lave the lips,
- And ease the panting breathlessness of age.
- But no, not Mede-land with its wealth of woods,
- Nor Ganges fair, and Hermus thick with gold,
- Can match the praise of Italy; nor Ind,
- Nor Bactria, nor Panchaia, one wide tract
- Of incense-teeming sand. Here never bulls
- With nostrils snorting fire upturned the sod
- Sown with the monstrous dragon's teeth, nor crop
- Of warriors bristled thick with lance and helm;
- But heavy harvests and the Massic juice
- Of Bacchus fill its borders, overspread
- With fruitful flocks and olives. Hence arose
- The war-horse stepping proudly o'er the plain;
- Hence thy white flocks, Clitumnus, and the bull,
- Of victims mightiest, which full oft have led,
- Bathed in thy sacred stream, the triumph-pomp
- Of Romans to the temples of the gods.
- Here blooms perpetual spring, and summer here
- In months that are not summer's; twice teem the flocks;
- Twice doth the tree yield service of her fruit.
- But ravening tigers come not nigh, nor breed
- Of savage lion, nor aconite betrays
- Its hapless gatherers, nor with sweep so vast
- Doth the scaled serpent trail his endless coils
- Along the ground, or wreathe him into spires.
- Mark too her cities, so many and so proud,
- Of mighty toil the achievement, town on town
- Up rugged precipices heaved and reared,
- And rivers undergliding ancient walls.
- Or should I celebrate the sea that laves
- Her upper shores and lower? or those broad lakes?
- Thee, Larius, greatest and, Benacus, thee
- With billowy uproar surging like the main?
- Or sing her harbours, and the barrier cast
- Athwart the Lucrine, and how ocean chafes
- With mighty bellowings, where the Julian wave
- Echoes the thunder of his rout, and through
- Avernian inlets pours the Tuscan tide?
- A land no less that in her veins displays
- Rivers of silver, mines of copper ore,
- Ay, and with gold hath flowed abundantly.
- A land that reared a valiant breed of men,
- The Marsi and Sabellian youth, and, schooled
- To hardship, the Ligurian, and with these
- The Volscian javelin-armed, the Decii too,
- The Marii and Camilli, names of might,
- The Scipios, stubborn warriors, ay, and thee,
- Great Caesar, who in Asia's utmost bounds
- With conquering arm e'en now art fending far
- The unwarlike Indian from the heights of Rome.
- Hail! land of Saturn, mighty mother thou
- Of fruits and heroes; 'tis for thee I dare
- Unseal the sacred fountains, and essay
- Themes of old art and glory, as I sing
- The song of Ascra through the towns of Rome.
- Now for the native gifts of various soils,
- What powers hath each, what hue, what natural bent
- For yielding increase. First your stubborn lands
- And churlish hill-sides, where are thorny fields
- Of meagre marl and gravel, these delight
- In long-lived olive-groves to Pallas dear.
- Take for a sign the plenteous growth hard by
- Of oleaster, and the fields strewn wide
- With woodland berries. But a soil that's rich,
- In moisture sweet exulting, and the plain
- That teems with grasses on its fruitful breast,
- Such as full oft in hollow mountain-dell
- We view beneath us—from the craggy heights
- Streams thither flow with fertilizing mud—
- A plain which southward rising feeds the fern
- By curved ploughs detested, this one day
- Shall yield thee store of vines full strong to gush
- In torrents of the wine-god; this shall be
- Fruitful of grapes and flowing juice like that
- We pour to heaven from bowls of gold, what time
- The sleek Etruscan at the altar blows
- His ivory pipe, and on the curved dish
- We lay the reeking entrails. If to rear
- Cattle delight thee rather, steers, or lambs,
- Or goats that kill the tender plants, then seek
- Full-fed Tarentum's glades and distant fields,
- Or such a plain as luckless Mantua lost
- Whose weedy water feeds the snow-white swan:
- There nor clear springs nor grass the flocks will fail,
- And all the day-long browsing of thy herds
- Shall the cool dews of one brief night repair.
- Land which the burrowing share shows dark and rich,
- With crumbling soil—for this we counterfeit
- In ploughing—for corn is goodliest; from no field
- More wains thou'lt see wend home with plodding steers;
- Or that from which the husbandman in spleen
- Has cleared the timber, and o'erthrown the copse
- That year on year lay idle, and from the roots
- Uptorn the immemorial haunt of birds;
- They banished from their nests have sought the skies;
- But the rude plain beneath the ploughshare's stroke
- Starts into sudden brightness. For indeed
- The starved hill-country gravel scarce serves the bees
- With lowly cassias and with rosemary;
- Rough tufa and chalk too, by black water-worms
- Gnawed through and through, proclaim no soils beside
- So rife with serpent-dainties, or that yield
- Such winding lairs to lurk in. That again,
- Which vapoury mist and flitting smoke exhales,
- Drinks moisture up and casts it forth at will,
- Which, ever in its own green grass arrayed,
- Mars not the metal with salt scurf of rust—
- That shall thine elms with merry vines enwreathe;
- That teems with olive; that shall thy tilth prove kind
- To cattle, and patient of the curved share.
- Such ploughs rich Capua, such the coast that skirts
- Thy ridge, Vesuvius, and the Clanian flood,
- Acerrae's desolation and her bane.
- How each to recognize now hear me tell.
- Dost ask if loose or passing firm it be—
- Since one for corn hath liking, one for wine,
- The firmer sort for Ceres, none too loose
- For thee, Lyaeus?—with scrutinizing eye
- First choose thy ground, and bid a pit be sunk
- Deep in the solid earth, then cast the mould
- All back again, and stamp the surface smooth.
- If it suffice not, loose will be the land,
- More meet for cattle and for kindly vines;
- But if, rebellious, to its proper bounds
- The soil returns not, but fills all the trench
- And overtops it, then the glebe is gross;
- Look for stiff ridges and reluctant clods,
- And with strong bullocks cleave the fallow crust.
- Salt ground again, and bitter, as 'tis called—
- Barren for fruits, by tilth untamable,
- Nor grape her kind, nor apples their good name
- Maintaining—will in this wise yield thee proof:
- Stout osier-baskets from the rafter-smoke,
- And strainers of the winepress pluck thee down;
- Hereinto let that evil land, with fresh
- Spring-water mixed, be trampled to the full;
- The moisture, mark you, will ooze all away,
- In big drops issuing through the osier-withes,
- But plainly will its taste the secret tell,
- And with a harsh twang ruefully distort
- The mouths of them that try it. Rich soil again
- We learn on this wise: tossed from hand to hand
- Yet cracks it never, but pitch-like, as we hold,
- Clings to the fingers. A land with moisture rife
- Breeds lustier herbage, and is more than meet
- Prolific. Ah I may never such for me
- O'er-fertile prove, or make too stout a show
- At the first earing! Heavy land or light
- The mute self-witness of its weight betrays.
- A glance will serve to warn thee which is black,
- Or what the hue of any. But hard it is
- To track the signs of that pernicious cold:
- Pines only, noxious yews, and ivies dark
- At times reveal its traces.