Georgics

Virgil

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

  1. What now
  2. Besteads him toil or service? to have turned
  3. The heavy sod with ploughshare? And yet these
  4. Ne'er knew the Massic wine-god's baneful boon,
  5. Nor twice replenished banquets: but on leaves
  6. They fare, and virgin grasses, and their cups
  7. Are crystal springs and streams with running tired,
  8. Their healthful slumbers never broke by care.
  9. Then only, say they, through that country side
  10. For Juno's rites were cattle far to seek,
  11. And ill-matched buffaloes the chariots drew
  12. To their high fanes. So, painfully with rakes
  13. They grub the soil, aye, with their very nails
  14. Dig in the corn-seeds, and with strained neck
  15. O'er the high uplands drag the creaking wains.
  16. No wolf for ambush pries about the pen,
  17. Nor round the flock prowls nightly; pain more sharp
  18. Subdues him: the shy deer and fleet-foot stags
  19. With hounds now wander by the haunts of men
  20. Vast ocean's offspring, and all tribes that swim,
  21. On the shore's confine the wave washes up,
  22. Like shipwrecked bodies: seals, unwonted there,
  23. Flee to the rivers. Now the viper dies,
  24. For all his den's close winding, and with scales
  25. Erect the astonied water-worms. The air
  26. Brooks not the very birds, that headlong fall,
  27. And leave their life beneath the soaring cloud.
  28. Moreover now nor change of fodder serves,
  29. And subtlest cures but injure; then were foiled
  30. The masters, Chiron sprung from Phillyron,
  31. And Amythaon's son Melampus. See!
  32. From Stygian darkness launched into the light
  33. Comes raging pale Tisiphone; she drives
  34. Disease and fear before her, day by day
  35. Still rearing higher that all-devouring head.
  36. With bleat of flocks and lowings thick resound
  37. Rivers and parched banks and sloping heights.
  38. At last in crowds she slaughters them, she chokes
  39. The very stalls with carrion-heaps that rot
  40. In hideous corruption, till men learn
  41. With earth to cover them, in pits to hide.
  42. For e'en the fells are useless; nor the flesh
  43. With water may they purge, or tame with fire,
  44. Nor shear the fleeces even, gnawed through and through
  45. With foul disease, nor touch the putrid webs;
  46. But, had one dared the loathly weeds to try,
  47. Red blisters and an unclean sweat o'erran
  48. His noisome limbs, till, no long tarriance made,
  49. The fiery curse his tainted frame devoured.