Georgics
Virgil
Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
- Learn also scented cedar-wood to burn
- Within the stalls, and snakes of noxious smell
- With fumes of galbanum to drive away.
- Oft under long-neglected cribs, or lurks
- A viper ill to handle, that hath fled
- The light in terror, or some snake, that wont
- 'Neath shade and sheltering roof to creep, and shower
- Its bane among the cattle, hugs the ground,
- Fell scourge of kine. Shepherd, seize stakes, seize stones!
- And as he rears defiance, and puffs out
- A hissing throat, down with him! see how low
- That cowering crest is vailed in flight, the while,
- His midmost coils and final sweep of tail
- Relaxing, the last fold drags lingering spires.
- Then that vile worm that in Calabrian glades
- Uprears his breast, and wreathes a scaly back,
- His length of belly pied with mighty spots—
- While from their founts gush any streams, while yet
- With showers of Spring and rainy south-winds earth
- Is moistened, lo! he haunts the pools, and here
- Housed in the banks, with fish and chattering frogs
- Crams the black void of his insatiate maw.
- Soon as the fens are parched, and earth with heat
- Is gaping, forth he darts into the dry,
- Rolls eyes of fire and rages through the fields,
- Furious from thirst and by the drought dismayed.
- Me list not then beneath the open heaven
- To snatch soft slumber, nor on forest-ridge
- Lie stretched along the grass, when, slipped his slough,
- To glittering youth transformed he winds his spires,
- And eggs or younglings leaving in his lair,
- Towers sunward, lightening with three-forked tongue.