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  Looks keenly forward to the coming year,

  With Saturn’s curved fang pursues and prunes

  The vine forlorn, and lops it into shape.

  Be first to dig the ground up, first to clear

  And burn the refuse-branches, first to house

  Again your vine-poles, last to gather fruit.

  Twice doth the thickening shade beset the vine,

  Twice weeds with stifling briers o’ergrow the crop;

  And each a toilsome labour. Do thou praise

  Broad acres, farm but few. Rough twigs beside

  Of butcher’s broom among the woods are cut,

  And reeds upon the river-banks, and still

  The undressed willow claims thy fostering care.

  So now the vines are fettered, now the trees

  Let go the sickle, and the last dresser now

  Sings of his finished rows; but still the ground

  Must vexed be, the dust be stirred, and heaven

  Still set thee trembling for the ripened grapes.

  Not so with olives; small husbandry need they,

  Nor look for sickle bowed or biting rake,

  When once they have gripped the soil, and borne the breeze.

  Earth of herself, with hooked fang laid bare,

  Yields moisture for the plants, and heavy fruit,

  The ploughshare aiding; therewithal thou’lt rear

  The olive’s fatness well-beloved of Peace.

  Apples, moreover, soon as first they feel

  Their stems wax lusty, and have found their strength,

  To heaven climb swiftly, self-impelled, nor crave

  Our succour. All the grove meanwhile no less

  With fruit is swelling, and the wild haunts of birds

  Blush with their blood-red berries. Cytisus

  Is good to browse on, the tall forest yields

  Pine-torches, and the nightly fires are fed

  And shoot forth radiance. And shall men be loath

  To plant, nor lavish of their pains? Why trace

  Things mightier? Willows even and lowly brooms

  To cattle their green leaves, to shepherds shade,

  Fences for crops, and food for honey yield.

  And blithe it is Cytorus to behold

  Waving with box, Narycian groves of pitch;

  Oh! blithe the sight of fields beholden not

  To rake or man’s endeavour! the barren woods

  That crown the scalp of Caucasus, even these,

  Which furious blasts for ever rive and rend,

  Yield various wealth, pine-logs that serve for ships,

  Cedar and cypress for the homes of men;

  Hence, too, the farmers shave their wheel-spokes, hence

  Drums for their wains, and curved boat-keels fit;

  Willows bear twigs enow, the elm-tree leaves,

  Myrtle stout spear-shafts, war-tried cornel too;

  Yews into Ituraean bows are bent:

  Nor do smooth lindens or lathe-polished box

  Shrink from man’s shaping and keen-furrowing steel;

  Light alder floats upon the boiling flood

  Sped down the Padus, and bees house their swarms

  In rotten holm-oak’s hollow bark and bole.

  What of like praise can Bacchus’ gifts afford?

  Nay, Bacchus even to crime hath prompted, he

  The wine-infuriate Centaurs quelled with death,

  Rhoetus and Pholus, and with mighty bowl

  Hylaeus threatening high the Lapithae.

  Oh! all too happy tillers of the soil,

  Could they but know their blessedness, for whom

  Far from the clash of arms all-equal earth

  Pours from the ground herself their easy fare!

  What though no lofty palace portal-proud

  From all its chambers vomits forth a tide

  Of morning courtiers, nor agape they gaze

  On pillars with fair tortoise-shell inwrought,

  Gold-purfled robes, and bronze from Ephyre;

  Nor is the whiteness of their wool distained

  With drugs Assyrian, nor clear olive’s use

  With cassia tainted; yet untroubled calm,

  A life that knows no falsehood, rich enow

  With various treasures, yet broad-acred ease,

  Grottoes and living lakes, yet Tempes cool,

  Lowing of kine, and sylvan slumbers soft,

  They lack not; lawns and wild beasts’ haunts are there,

  A youth of labour patient, need-inured,

  Worship, and reverend sires: with them from earth

  Departing justice her last footprints left.

  Me before all things may the Muses sweet,

  Whose rites I bear with mighty passion pierced,

  Receive, and show the paths and stars of heaven,

  The sun’s eclipses and the labouring moons,

  From whence the earthquake, by what power the seas

  Swell from their depths, and, every barrier burst,

  Sink back upon themselves, why winter-suns

  So haste to dip ‘neath ocean, or what check

  The lingering night retards. But if to these

  High realms of nature the cold curdling blood

  About my heart bar access, then be fields

  And stream-washed vales my solace, let me love

  Rivers and woods, inglorious. Oh for you

  Plains, and Spercheius, and Taygete,

  By Spartan maids o’er-revelled! Oh, for one,

  Would set me in deep dells of Haemus cool,

  And shield me with his boughs’ o’ershadowing might!

  Happy, who had the skill to understand

  Nature’s hid causes, and beneath his feet

  All terrors cast, and death’s relentless doom,

  And the loud roar of greedy Acheron.

  Blest too is he who knows the rural gods,

  Pan, old Silvanus, and the sister-nymphs!

  Him nor the rods of public power can bend,

  Nor kingly purple, nor fierce feud that drives

  Brother to turn on brother, nor descent

  Of Dacian from the Danube’s leagued flood,

  Nor Rome’s great State, nor kingdoms like to die;

  Nor hath he grieved through pitying of the poor,

  Nor envied him that hath. What fruit the boughs,

  And what the fields, of their own bounteous will

  Have borne, he gathers; nor iron rule of laws,

  Nor maddened Forum have his eyes beheld,

  Nor archives of the people. Others vex

  The darksome gulfs of Ocean with their oars,

  Or rush on steel: they press within the courts

  And doors of princes; one with havoc falls

  Upon a city and its hapless hearths,

  From gems to drink, on Tyrian rugs to lie;

  This hoards his wealth and broods o’er buried gold;

  One at the rostra stares in blank amaze;

  One gaping sits transported by the cheers,

  The answering cheers of plebs and senate rolled

  Along the benches: bathed in brothers’ blood

  Men revel, and, all delights of hearth and home

  For exile changing, a new country seek

  Beneath an alien sun. The husbandman

  With hooked ploughshare turns the soil; from hence

  Springs his year’s labour; hence, too, he sustains

  Country and cottage homestead, and from hence

  His herds of cattle and deserving steers.

  No respite! still the year o’erflows with fruit,

  Or young of kine, or Ceres’ wheaten sheaf,

  With crops the furrow loads, and bursts the barns.

  Winter is come: in olive-mills they bruise

  The Sicyonian berry; acorn-cheered

  The swine troop homeward; woods their arbutes yield;

  So, various fruit sheds Autumn, and high up

  On
sunny rocks the mellowing vintage bakes.

  Meanwhile about his lips sweet children cling;

  His chaste house keeps its purity; his kine

  Drop milky udders, and on the lush green grass

  Fat kids are striving, horn to butting horn.

  Himself keeps holy days; stretched o’er the sward,

  Where round the fire his comrades crown the bowl,

  He pours libation, and thy name invokes,

  Lenaeus, and for the herdsmen on an elm

  Sets up a mark for the swift javelin; they

  Strip their tough bodies for the rustic sport.

  Such life of yore the ancient Sabines led,

  Such Remus and his brother: Etruria thus,

  Doubt not, to greatness grew, and Rome became

  The fair world’s fairest, and with circling wall

  Clasped to her single breast the sevenfold hills.

  Ay, ere the reign of Dicte’s king, ere men,

  Waxed godless, banqueted on slaughtered bulls,

  Such life on earth did golden Saturn lead.

  Nor ear of man had heard the war-trump’s blast,

  Nor clang of sword on stubborn anvil set.

  But lo! a boundless space we have travelled o’er;

  ’Tis time our steaming horses to unyoke.

  GEORGIC III

  Thee too, great Pales, will I hymn, and thee,

  Amphrysian shepherd, worthy to be sung,

  You, woods and waves Lycaean. All themes beside,

  Which else had charmed the vacant mind with song,

  Are now waxed common. Of harsh Eurystheus who

  The story knows not, or that praiseless king

  Busiris, and his altars? or by whom

  Hath not the tale been told of Hylas young,

  Latonian Delos and Hippodame,

  And Pelops for his ivory shoulder famed,

  Keen charioteer? Needs must a path be tried,

  By which I too may lift me from the dust,

  And float triumphant through the mouths of men.

  Yea, I shall be the first, so life endure,

  To lead the Muses with me, as I pass

  To mine own country from the Aonian height;

  I, Mantua, first will bring thee back the palms

  Of Idumaea, and raise a marble shrine

  On thy green plain fast by the water-side,

  Where Mincius winds more vast in lazy coils,

  And rims his margent with the tender reed.

  Amid my shrine shall Caesar’s godhead dwell.

  To him will I, as victor, bravely dight

  In Tyrian purple, drive along the bank

  A hundred four-horse cars. All Greece for me,

  Leaving Alpheus and Molorchus’ grove,

  On foot shall strive, or with the raw-hide glove;

  Whilst I, my head with stripped green olive crowned,

  Will offer gifts. Even ’tis present joy

  To lead the high processions to the fane,

  And view the victims felled; or how the scene

  Sunders with shifted face, and Britain’s sons

  Inwoven thereon with those proud curtains rise.

  Of gold and massive ivory on the doors

  I’ll trace the battle of the Gangarides,

  And our Quirinus’ conquering arms, and there

  Surging with war, and hugely flowing, the Nile,

  And columns heaped on high with naval brass.

  And Asia’s vanquished cities I will add,

  And quelled Niphates, and the Parthian foe,

  Who trusts in flight and backward-volleying darts,

  And trophies torn with twice triumphant hand

  From empires twain on ocean’s either shore.

  And breathing forms of Parian marble there

  Shall stand, the offspring of Assaracus,

  And great names of the Jove-descended folk,

  And father Tros, and Troy’s first founder, lord

  Of Cynthus. And accursed Envy there

  Shall dread the Furies, and thy ruthless flood,

  Cocytus, and Ixion’s twisted snakes,

  And that vast wheel and ever-baffling stone.

  Meanwhile the Dryad-haunted woods and lawns

  Unsullied seek we; ’tis thy hard behest,

  Maecenas. Without thee no lofty task

  My mind essays. Up! break the sluggish bonds

  Of tarriance; with loud din Cithaeron calls,

  Steed-taming Epidaurus, and thy hounds,

  Taygete; and hark! the assenting groves

  With peal on peal reverberate the roar.

  Yet must I gird me to rehearse ere long

  The fiery fights of Caesar, speed his name

  Through ages, countless as to Caesar’s self

  From the first birth-dawn of Tithonus old.

  If eager for the prized Olympian palm

  One breed the horse, or bullock strong to plough,

  Be his prime care a shapely dam to choose.

  Of kine grim-faced is goodliest, with coarse head

  And burly neck, whose hanging dewlaps reach

  From chin to knee; of boundless length her flank;

  Large every way she is, large-footed even,

  With incurved horns and shaggy ears beneath.

  Nor let mislike me one with spots of white

  Conspicuous, or that spurns the yoke, whose horn

  At times hath vice in’t: liker bull-faced she,

  And tall-limbed wholly, and with tip of tail

  Brushing her footsteps as she walks along.

  The age for Hymen’s rites, Lucina’s pangs,

  Ere ten years ended, after four begins;

  Their residue of days nor apt to teem,

  Nor strong for ploughing. Meantime, while youth’s delight

  Survives within them, loose the males: be first

  To speed thy herds of cattle to their loves,

  Breed stock with stock, and keep the race supplied.

  Ah! life’s best hours are ever first to fly

  From hapless mortals; in their place succeed

  Disease and dolorous eld; till travail sore

  And death unpitying sweep them from the scene.

  Still will be some, whose form thou fain wouldst change;

  Renew them still; with yearly choice of young

  Preventing losses, lest too late thou rue.

  Nor steeds crave less selection; but on those

  Thou think’st to rear, the promise of their line,

  From earliest youth thy chiefest pains bestow.

  See from the first yon high-bred colt afield,

  His lofty step, his limbs’ elastic tread:

  Dauntless he leads the herd, still first to try

  The threatening flood, or brave the unknown bridge,

  By no vain noise affrighted; lofty-necked,

  With clean-cut head, short belly, and stout back;

  His sprightly breast exuberant with brawn.

  Chestnut and grey are good; the worst-hued white

  And sorrel. Then lo! if arms are clashed afar,

  Bide still he cannot: ears stiffen and limbs quake;

  His nostrils snort and roll out wreaths of fire.

  Dense is his mane, that when uplifted falls

  On his right shoulder; betwixt either loin

  The spine runs double; his earth-dinting hoof

  Rings with the ponderous beat of solid horn.

  Even such a horse was Cyllarus, reined and tamed

  By Pollux of Amyclae; such the pair

  In Grecian song renowned, those steeds of Mars,

  And famed Achilles’ team: in such-like form

  Great Saturn’s self with mane flung loose on neck

  Sped at his wife’s approach, and flying filled

  The heights of Pelion with his piercing neigh.

  Even him, when sore disease or sluggish eld

  Now saps his strength, pen fast at home, and spare
/>   His not inglorious age. A horse grown old

  Slow kindling unto love in vain prolongs

  The fruitless task, and, to the encounter come,

  As fire in stubble blusters without strength,

  He rages idly. Therefore mark thou first

  Their age and mettle, other points anon,

  As breed and lineage, or what pain was theirs

  To lose the race, what pride the palm to win.

  Seest how the chariots in mad rivalry

  Poured from the barrier grip the course and go,

  When youthful hope is highest, and every heart

  Drained with each wild pulsation? How they ply

  The circling lash, and reaching forward let

  The reins hang free! Swift spins the glowing wheel;

  And now they stoop, and now erect in air

  Seem borne through space and towering to the sky:

  No stop, no stay; the dun sand whirls aloft;

  They reek with foam-flakes and pursuing breath;

  So sweet is fame, so prized the victor’s palm.

  ’Twas Ericthonius first took heart to yoke

  Four horses to his car, and rode above

  The whirling wheels to victory: but the ring

  And bridle-reins, mounted on horses’ backs,

  The Pelethronian Lapithae bequeathed,

  And taught the knight in arms to spurn the ground,

  And arch the upgathered footsteps of his pride.

  Each task alike is arduous, and for each

  A horse young, fiery, swift of foot, they seek;

  How oft so-e’er yon rival may have chased

  The flying foe, or boast his native plain

  Epirus, or Mycenae’s stubborn hold,

  And trace his lineage back to Neptune’s birth.

  These points regarded, as the time draws nigh,

  With instant zeal they lavish all their care

  To plump with solid fat the chosen chief

  And designated husband of the herd:

  And flowery herbs they cut, and serve him well

  With corn and running water, that his strength

  Not fail him for that labour of delight,

  Nor puny colts betray the feeble sire.

  The herd itself of purpose they reduce

  To leanness, and when love’s sweet longing first

  Provokes them, they forbid the leafy food,

  And pen them from the springs, and oft beside

  With running shake, and tire them in the sun,

  What time the threshing-floor groans heavily

  With pounding of the corn-ears, and light chaff

  Is whirled on high to catch the rising west.

  This do they that the soil’s prolific powers

  May not be dulled by surfeiting, nor choke

  The sluggish furrows, but eagerly absorb

  Their fill of love, and deeply entertain.