Georgics
Virgil
Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
- What now
- Besteads him toil or service? to have turned
- The heavy sod with ploughshare? And yet these
- Ne'er knew the Massic wine-god's baneful boon,
- Nor twice replenished banquets: but on leaves
- They fare, and virgin grasses, and their cups
- Are crystal springs and streams with running tired,
- Their healthful slumbers never broke by care.
- Then only, say they, through that country side
- For Juno's rites were cattle far to seek,
- And ill-matched buffaloes the chariots drew
- To their high fanes. So, painfully with rakes
- They grub the soil, aye, with their very nails
- Dig in the corn-seeds, and with strained neck
- O'er the high uplands drag the creaking wains.
- No wolf for ambush pries about the pen,
- Nor round the flock prowls nightly; pain more sharp
- Subdues him: the shy deer and fleet-foot stags
- With hounds now wander by the haunts of men
- Vast ocean's offspring, and all tribes that swim,
- On the shore's confine the wave washes up,
- Like shipwrecked bodies: seals, unwonted there,
- Flee to the rivers. Now the viper dies,
- For all his den's close winding, and with scales
- Erect the astonied water-worms. The air
- Brooks not the very birds, that headlong fall,
- And leave their life beneath the soaring cloud.
- Moreover now nor change of fodder serves,
- And subtlest cures but injure; then were foiled
- The masters, Chiron sprung from Phillyron,
- And Amythaon's son Melampus. See!
- From Stygian darkness launched into the light
- Comes raging pale Tisiphone; she drives
- Disease and fear before her, day by day
- Still rearing higher that all-devouring head.
- With bleat of flocks and lowings thick resound
- Rivers and parched banks and sloping heights.
- At last in crowds she slaughters them, she chokes
- The very stalls with carrion-heaps that rot
- In hideous corruption, till men learn
- With earth to cover them, in pits to hide.
- For e'en the fells are useless; nor the flesh
- With water may they purge, or tame with fire,
- Nor shear the fleeces even, gnawed through and through
- With foul disease, nor touch the putrid webs;
- But, had one dared the loathly weeds to try,
- Red blisters and an unclean sweat o'erran
- His noisome limbs, till, no long tarriance made,
- The fiery curse his tainted frame devoured.