Georgics

Virgil

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

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