The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• P. Vergili Maronis Georgicon Liber Primus.
• The Georgics of Virgil. Book I.
• P. Vergili Maronis Georgicon Liber Secundus.
• The Georgics of Virgil. Book II.
• P. Vergili Maronis Georgicon Liber Tertius.
• The Georgics of Virgil. Book III.
• P. Vergili Maronis Georgicon Liber Quartus.
• The Georgics of Virgil. Book IV.

THE GEORGICS OF VIRGIL.

BOOK I.

• What maketh the harvests’ golden laughter, what star-clusters guide
• The yeoman for turning the furrow, for wedding the elm to his bride,
• All rearing of cattle, all tending of flocks, all mysteries
• By old experience taught of the treasure-hoarding bees—
• These shall be theme of my song. O ye bright stars of the sphere,5
• Who pilot, as softly it glides o’er the sea of the heavens, the year;
• Bacchus and fostering Ceres, if earth, through your kindness, in scorn
• Turned from the acorns wild to the glory and gold of the corn,
• And mingled her water-chalice with grapes of your bounty born;
• And ye, Fauns, Gods of the country-folk, ever mighty to aid,10
• Draw nigh, O Fauns, and with you draw nigh each Dryad-maid;
• For yours are the gifts that I chant; and thou, at whose trident-stroke
• Snorting the first of steeds from the earth like a fountain broke,
• Neptune; and Orchard-haunter, for whom by the Cyclad Sea
• Steers snow-white are browsing the fertile copses by hundreds three;15
• Thou too from thy forest-cradle, from glades of Lycaeus, draw near
• Pan, Tegea’s Lord, O Guardian of sheep—if thou holdest dear
• Maenala, graciously come! Minerva, creator thou
• Of the olive; and thou, young hero, sire of the curvèd plough;
• And, Wood-king, thou, with a slim young cypress uptorn in thine hand.20
• Come, Gods and Goddesses all who are zealous to ward tilth-land;
• Come, ye who nurture the new-born crops that no hands sow;
• Come, ye who cause from the heavens the plenteous showers to flow!
• And thou—O thou!—none knows what place in the courts of the sky
• Thou, Caesar, wilt choose. To our cities wilt thou descend from on high,25
• And watch o’er the weal of the world?—shall the lands’ vast circle adore
• Thee, as the Giver of Increase, the Lord of the Seasons Four,
• A monarch whose head is wreathed with his Mother’s myrtle-spray?
• Wilt thou come to be god of the limitless main, and shall seafarers pray
• To thy godhead alone, and uttermost Thule be thrall to thy power,30

• And the Sea-queen give thee her daughter with all her waves for dower?
• Or a new star, guiding the slowly-rolling months, wilt thou be,
• Where ’twixt the Virgin and Claws a wide space opens for thee:—
• Lo, now the Scorpion is drawing aside his arms of flame,
• And hath left thee more than the space that a single Sign doth claim!35
• Whichsoe’er thou wilt be—not Tartarus hopes thee to sit on her throne;
• And God forbid thou shouldst covet that awful crown for thine own!
• Though Greece may dream of a Paradise there, an Elysian Plain,
• Though oft-sought Proserpine care not to follow her mother again;—
• O speed my course, O smile upon this my bold emprise!40
• Look on the peasant who knows not the way with compassionate eyes!
• Come! Hear and answer prayer even now, ere thou mount to the skies!

• In the birth-tide of spring, when melt from the mountains the ice and the snow,
• And the crumbling clods are breaking down as the west-winds blow,
• Then let the bull begin to groan, at the plough deep-thrust45
• As he strains, let the share gleam bright as the furrows scour it of rust.
• That field will grant to the prayers of the greediest husbandman more
• Than all, which twice to the sunglare, and twice to the winter frore
• Hath been bared: his barns ever burst with their measureless golden store.
• But, or ever we cleave with the share this chartless sea of good,50
• The winds let us heedfully learn, and the sky’s ever-changing mood,
• The inherited needs for nurture and dressing of soil and soil,
• What fruits each region will yield, and what deny to our toil.
• Here corn-crops, yonder grapes in richer abundance glow,
• Otherwhere offspring of trees, or unbidden the green tides flow55
• Of the grass. Mark Tmolus—the odours of saffron are streaming thence:
• Her ivory India sends, Sabaeans their frankincense,
• The bare-armed Chalybes iron, and Pontus the beaver’s balm,
• And Epirus the mares that win in the race the Olympian palm.
• Such laws and abiding covenant-pledges did Nature lay60
• On the several lands ordained, yea, since that far-off day
• When Deucalion first cast stones o’er a world unpeopled yet,
• Whence sprang this flint-heart race of men. O come then, set
• Thy sturdy steers with the year’s first months to upturn with the share
• The mould of a rich soil: then, when the clods are so laid bare,65
• Let summer scorch them to dust with her ripening suns’ hot glare.
• But if fertile the soil be not, will a shallow furrow suffice
• For throwing it up in ridges light ere Arcturus rise:—
• Treat rich soils so, lest choking weeds mid the glad corn stand,
• And poor, lest the moisture fail, and leave them a waste of sand.70

• In years alternate withal shalt thou let thy reaped field bide
• Fallow: the face of the sleeping plain let a hard crust hide.
• Else, sow ’neath the stars of a diverse season the golden corn
• Where erst the pods of the glad pulse danced in the wind of morn,
• Or where the progeny slender-limbed of the weak vetch climbed,75
• Or the frail stalks stood and the bells of the bitter lupine chimed:
• Not flax or oats!—for their harvest burns out the sap of the plain,
• So likewise do poppies drenched with oblivion’s slumber-rain.
• Yet thy toil by rotation is made more light: but forbear not of pride
• From mulching with fattening dung parched soil, nor from scattering wide
• The ash-grime over the fields whence the nature and strength has died.
• So also by change of crop land gains the rest that is sought,
• Nor left untilled the while is the soil, and thankful for naught.
• Oft, too, hath it much availed to fire the barren lands,
• And to smite with the sword of flame the stubble’s light-armed bands:85
• Whether mysterious strength and nourishment be given
• To the soil thereby, or whether all evil and poisonous leaven
• Be scorched therefrom, and useless moisture be steamed away,
• Or that many a channel and pore long hidden from light of day
• Is unsealed by the heat, wherethrough to the young blades sap may rise;90
• Or that rather it hardens, and closes the clefts that gape to the skies,
• Lest the searching rains or a scorching sun’s too vehement stress,
• Or the north-wind’s piercing cold may blast it to barrenness.
• And greatly he helpeth his land, who shatters the torpid clods
• With the mattock, and drags with-harrows across;—from the home of the Gods95
• Looks golden Ceres down upon him with favouring brow;—
• He too, who, after his field’s first furrowing, turneth the plough
• Athwart, and breaks through the sides of the ridges, with ceaseless toil
• Laboureth ever the earth, and is despot over the soil.

• For drizzling summers and sunny winters, husbandmen, pray;100
• For a winter of dust with a glorious robe of corn will array
• Thy glorying field: this, more than all tillage of man, makes proud
• Mysia, makes Gargara marvel bedraped with her golden cloud.
• Can I praise him enough, who casteth his seed, then hand to hand
• Charges the field, and levels its hillocks of barren sand,105
• Then leads a brimming brook and its following rills o’er the land?
• When fevered the parched land lies, and the corn-blades dying sink,
• Lo, he is luring the wave from its hillside-channel’s brink—
• O see it, where falling it wakes amid pebbles smooth and round
• Hoarse murmurs, and cools with its gushings the burning lips of the ground!110

• He is wise who, lest ’neath the ears’ weight earthward the stalks be flung,
• Grazes the lush growth down while green is the blade and young,
• Soon as the crops to the furrows’ level have risen; and he
• Who drains and cleanses through filtering sand the wet-clogged lea;
• Then most, if a river swelling in months of unsettled skies115
• Overflows, and a veil of slime over all the lowland lies,
• And from pools in every hollow upsteaming the vapours rise.

• Yet, yet, when the labours of men and of oxen have done all this
• For the land, much mischief is wrought by the goose with her shameless hiss,
• By norland cranes, by the bitter-rooted succory killed120
• Is the corn, or by shade is stunted. Allfather himself hath willed
• That the pathway of tillage be thorny. He first by man’s art broke
• Earth’s crust, and by care for the morrow made keen the wits of her folk,
• Nor suffered his kingdom to drowse ’neath lethargy’s crushing chain.
• No husbandman tamed the savage fields before Jove’s reign.125
• To mark for one’s own a plot of land, to divide the plain
• By a boundary-line, was a sin: all winnings in common were won.
• Earth of herself bare all things freely, and bidden of none.
• It was Jove who bestowed their deadly venom on serpents fell,
• Who bade wolves ravin for prey, and the sea in tempest swell,130
• Who dashed from the leaves their honey, who made fire flee away,
• Who stilled the brooks that with wine were wont to hurry and stray,
• That Thought on experience’ anvil might shape arts manifold,
• And might seek in the furrow the blade that is pledge of the harvest’s gold,
• And smite from the veins of flint the fire-soul hidden there.135
• Then first of the hollowed alder-shell were the rivers ware:
• Then shipmen numbered the stars, and gave unto each his name,
• As the Pleiads, the Hyads, the Huntress-bear’s bright points of flame.
• Then how wild things are snared, and with birdlime how betrayed
• Men found, and how with the hounds to compass the forest-glade.140
• And now one lashes a broad stream’s face with a casting-net,
• Searching the depths, one drags from the sea seines dripping-wet.
• Then came the unyielding iron, the saw-blade’s hissing scream—
• For with wedges the first men cleft from the tree the rough-hewn beam:—
• Then followed manifold arts: unflinching toil ever won145
• Triumphs: in hardship’s school stern need still drave men on.
• By Ceres were men first taught with iron to upheave the ground,
• When acorns now and arbute-berries were no more found,
• And Dodona denied the food erst scattered freely round.
• But trouble and travail soon fell on the corn: by noisome rust150

• Were the stalks devoured: the lazy thistle his dense spears thrust
• Mid the wheat-ranks: perish the crops; uprises a thicket of thorn,
• Of caltrops, of burrs, and over the gleaming gold of the corn
• The fruitless darnel lords it, the barren oat is king.
• Then unless thou assail the weeds with the mattock’s tireless swing,155
• And scare with clangour the birds, and thin with thine hook the shade
• Of thy farm overgloomed, and with vows call down the rain to thine aid,
• Alas for thee! thou wilt eye thy neighbour’s pile in vain,
• And wilt shake the oak in the woods to allay thine hunger’s pain.

• Now named be the weapons meet for the sturdy yeoman’s toil,160
• Without which never could harvests be sown nor spring from the soil.
• The share and the ponderous strength of the curved plough first do I name,
• And the wains slow-rolling, the gift of Eleusis’ Goddess-dame,
• The sledge and the drag withal, and the mattock of grievous weight,
• And old King Celeus’ invention, the costless wattled crate,165
• Hurdles of arbute, Iacchus’ fan, the mystic sign.
• Forget not betimes to provide all these, and to store, if thine
• Is to be at the last a glory worthy the land divine.

• The elm in the woods from the first is by main force made to bow
• To the plough-stock’s arch, and receives the shape of the curvèd plough.170
• Eight feet forward the pole from the stock thereof must run:
• Two mould-boards and share-beams of twofold ridge are fitted thereon.
• For the yoke hath a linden light been felled, a towering beech
• For the handle, the which to thy car her earth-hidden course shall teach.
• O’er the hearth hang all, that the smoke may search through the fibres of each.175

• Many a maxim could I recount of the men of old,
• If thou start not back, and begrudge of lowly cares to be told.
• With the giant roller levelled must be thy threshing-floor,
• Firm-paved with clay, by handwork kneaded and oft turned o’er,
• Lest weeds spring up, lest it crack in the hot dust’s triumphing-hour,180
• And manifold vermin mock thy toil. Her barn and her bower
• Oft hath the pigmy mouse built under the earth’s smooth face,
• Or the eyeless mole hath scooped thereunder a slumber-place,
• And in crannies the toad is found, and all things hideous and vile
• Earth spawns: of thy corn will the weevil ravage a mighty pile,185
• And the ant, by dread of an age of want spurred on to toil.
• Mark, too, when the wide-spreading walnut amidst of the woods in a cloud
• Of blossoms arrays her, and earthward her odorous arms are bowed,
• If the most of them set into fruit, even so shall thine harvest be;
• Great shall be summer’s heat, great labour of threshing for thee.190

• But if leaves in lavish greenness and broad shade gloom around,
• In vain shall thy floor bruise haulms that in naught but chaff abound.
• Many men have I known drug seeds ere they trusted them to the soil;
• In natron they wont to steep them, and dark thick lees of oil,
• That fuller the fruit might swell in the pod that so oft is a liar,195
• And quickly might seethe and soften, how scant soever the fire.
• I have seen seeds chosen through years, and with infinite labour scanned,
• Degenerate notwithstanding, unless each season by hand
• Men picked out ever the finest. So, by the law of Fate
• Haste all things from good to worse, slip downhill soon or late.200
• It is even as when against the stream with might and main
• One roweth a boat; if he haply relax his arms’ strong strain,
• Headlong adown the river the current sweeps him again.

• We yeomen, moreover, must watch Arcturus’ star, and the rise
• Of the Kids, and the gleaming Serpent, with no less heedful eyes205
• Than do they who over the wind-scourged waters homeward-bound
• On Pontus venture their lives, and Abydos’ oyster-ground.
• When the hours of day and of slumber the Balance hath equal made,
• And now hath parted the world in twain ’twixt light and shade,
• Goad, yeomen, your steers to their toil, wide sow with barley the plain210
• To the very verge of baffling winter’s stormy rain.
• Then too is the time when the flax and the poppy of Ceres should lie
• Earth-veiled, and ere then, while thou canst, while yet the ground is dry,
• Bend over the plough, while the clouds burst not, but still hang high.
• For beans is the sowing-time spring; then, child of the East, lucerne,215
• Soft furrows receive thee, and care for the millet must yearly return
• When gleaming-white the Bull with his golden horns thrusts wide
• The gates of the year, and the Dogstar backward sinks in the tide.
• But if for a harvest of wheat and of sturdy spelt thou wilt till
• The ground, and on naught but the golden ears hast fixed thy will,220
• Let the morning setting of Atlas’ Daughters be seen of thee,
• And the eventide plunge of the stars of the flaming Crown in the sea,
• Or ever thou yield to the furrows their debt of seed, and ere
• Thou haste to entrust to the grudging earth the hope of the year.
• Many before the setting of Maia begin, but they225
• See their dream of a harvest vanish in empty ears away.
• But and if it be vetch thou wilt sow, and the bean of little price,
• And the care of the Nile-born lentil be not contemned in thine eyes,
• Boötes’ setting will flash unto thee no doubtful token:
• Begin, and till frost’s mid-season thy sowing may stretch unbroken.230

• For our guidance the sun directeth his golden car’s career
• In portions fixed, measured out through the twelve great Signs of the sphere.
• Five Zones span all the heaven, whereof one flusheth aye
• Red in the flame of the sun, and is scorched by his fire alway;
• And around this far to the right and far to the left sweep twain235
• Stiff-frozen with pale-blue ice, and dark with stormy rain.
• ’Twixt these and the midmost are twain bestowed by the bounty of Heaven
• On afflicted mortals, and through them a highway celestial is driven
• Where slantwise wheels the procession of Signs for seasons given.
• High as the world towers up toward norland hills of snow,240
• So low doth it slope and sink toward Libya’s torrid glow.
• This pole hangeth over our heads evermore: that other, ’tis told,
• Dark Styx and the netherworld Ghosts far under their feet behold.
• With sinuous coiling here doth the giant Serpent glide,
• And around and between the Bears in river-fashion slide—245
• The Bears that fearfully shrink from plunging in Ocean’s tide.
• There, as they tell—we know not—is hush of the dead of night
• Ever, and gloom made thicker by darkness palling the light;
• Or haply from us returning Aurora to them brings day,
• And on us when the breath of the panting steeds of Dawn doth play,250
• The Evening-star in the gloaming is kindling there her ray.
• Hence storms, whereunto the face of the heavens gives no clue,
• Are foreknown, and the day of harvest, the time unto sowing due,
• And when with the oar to smite the smooth bright treacherous main
• Shall be safe, and when to launch on the deep armadas again,255
• Or to lay the forest-pine in its season low on the plain.
• Nor for naught do we watch the Signs as they rise or sink from the sky,
• And note the Seasons that quarter the year so evenly.

• Whensoever by sleety rain the yeoman is prisoned fast,
• Much work that, when skies are fair, must needs be wrought in haste,260
• May be done betimes; for then the ploughman sharpens and shapes
• His blunted share’s hard fang, from the tree carves troughs for the grapes,
• He sets his mark on his flock, his tallies on grain-heaps lays;
• Some point vine-stakes the while, and double-horned vine-stays,
• And prepare for the vine-shoots bands of pliant willow-sprays.265
• Now is the flexible basket woven of briar or rush;
• Now parch o’er the fire your grain, and now with the millstone crush.

• Nay, even on holy-days the laws of God and man
• Permit some works to be done: no scruple hath laid its ban
• On leading the runnels over the crops, on fencing the corn,270

• On laying snares for birds, on burning briar and thorn,
• On plunging into the health-giving river the bleating sheep.
• And the ass’s driver often with oil or with apples cheap
• Then ladeth the slow beast’s sides, and returning bringeth back
• From the town an indented millstone or pitch-mass glossy-black.275

• The Moon herself hath allotted days of blessing and bale
• For thy diverse works. The fifth shun thou; then Orcus the pale
• And the Furies were born; then Earth brought forth that spawn of hell,
• Coeus, Iapetus bare she, the giant Typhoeus the fell,
• And the brethren leagued to raze the shining walls of Heaven.280
• Thrice upon Pelion to pile up Ossa these had striven,
• And on Ossa to roll Olympus up with his forest-crown:
• Thrice by Allfather’s bolts was their mountain-pile dashed down.
• For planting the vine the seventeenth day good fortune gives,
• And for tying the loops to the warp, and for catching and breaking beeves.285
• Propitious to runaway slaves is the ninth, but adverse to thieves.

• Many a task, in sooth, is fitlier done in the night,
• Or when the Daystar bedeweth the earth, ere the sun is bright.
• Better by night light stubble is cut, parched meads better mown
• By night, when with plenteous night-dews springy the grass hath grown.290
• By his winter-fire’s red glow one keeps late vigil, with knife
• Keen-whetted pointing him torchwood slivers, the while his wife
• Brightens the long monotonous household-toil with singing,
• While racing athwart her web is the shuttle shrilly ringing,
• Or over the Fire-king’s flame she boils down thick sweet must,295
• And skims with leaves the quivering caldron’s white foam-crust.
• But the ruddy corn with the sickle is cut in the midnoon heat,
• And the chaff from the grain in the midnoon glare doth the threshing-floor beat.
• All cloakless plough, sow cloakless: in winter the yeoman may rest;
• Mid its cold do the husbandmen ever enjoy their storehouses’ best.300
• They make merry together, and neighbours for neighbours the feast prepare.
• It is hospitality’s high-tide, it loosens the fetters of care;
• As when keels deep-laden have won to the haven for which they yearn,
• And the gladsome mariners wreathe with garlands every stern.
• Yet then is the season for stripping of acorns the oak in the wood,305
• The berries of laurel and olive and myrtle red as blood,
• The season to snare the cranes, the nets for the stag to spread,
• To course the long-eared hare, to whirl around the head
• The sling of the Western Isles, and to smite the deer with the stone,
• When the snow lies deep, when the rivers are driving the ice-pack on.310

• What of the stormy stars of autumn-tide shall I say,
• How watchful men must be, when shorter now is the day,
• And tempered the heat?—or when Spring pours down in torrents of rain,
• When the harvest of spears bristles over the fields, when every grain
• Is swelling, milky yet, in the green stalks thronging the plain?315
• Oft I, when the yeoman was bringing his reapers into the field
• Of gold, was in act to strip the frail-stalked barley’s yield,
• Have seen the embattled hosts of the winds all clash in the fray,
• Tearing the heavy-eared crop from its hold on the earth away,
• Whirling it up through the air, till the stubble and stalk of the corn320
• Are flying like birds on the tempest’s black tornado borne.
• A Titan battalion of waters oft sweeps from the welkin down,
• And the huddled clouds roll up on the storm’s malignant frown
• Black deluge of rain: the firmament crashes to earth from the height,
• And floods with its measureless downpour the crops late smiling bright,325
• And the toil of the steers: brim trenches, the swelling rivers roar
• In their gorges; the sea is boiling o’er leagues of steaming shore.
• In the midst of the night of clouds Allfather himself is shaking
• His bolts in his gleaming hand: the earth’s huge mass is quaking
• At the rush of them: fled have the beasts; men’s hearts through every land330
• By grovelling panic are cowed, while He with his blazing brand
• Hurls Athos or Rhodope down, or the Cape of the Thunder-strand.
• Ever louder the south-wind howls, the rain pours thick and fast;
• Now shrieketh the forest, now waileth the shore in the mighty blast.

• In fear of this, mark well heaven’s stars and the months that they light;335
• Note whither the shivering planet of Saturn shrinks from sight,
• What orbits in heaven Mercury’s wandering fire makes bright.
• Before all things worship the Gods: thy yearly sacrifice bring
• Unto Ceres; on glad green grass pay thou thine offering
• When the last sun of winter has set, when calm is the smile of Spring.340
• Fat are the lambkins then, then wines are mellowest,
• Then slumber is sweet, and thick is the shade on the mountain’s breast.
• Thou shalt see all lads of the country-side Queen Ceres adore.
• Milk blended with honey and mellow wine unto her do thou pour:
• Around the young crops thrice let the victim propitious pace,345
• And let all the array of the neighbours attend it with gladsome face,
• And call upon Ceres with outcry loud—“To our homes draw near!”
• And let no man lay the sickle unto the ripened ear
• Or ever to Ceres, with temples wreathed with the twined oak-bough,
• He present the uncouth dance, and chant the Hymn of the Plough.350

• That by tokens sure these things may still be of us foretold—
• The sultry heat and the rain, and the winds that waft the cold,—
• Allfather appointed what warnings the monthly moon should bring,
• What sign should betoken the south-wind’s lulling, what oft-seen thing
• Bid husbandmen gather their flocks more nigh to the fold from the lea.355
• Soon as the winds are rising, begins on the gulfs of the sea
• A tossing and surging; rings from the high hills suddenly
• A crash as of dry wood snapping; or far-resounding the shore
• Is a turmoil of echoes: more loud is the moan of the woods evermore.
• No longer the breakers forbear to buffet the keels, when fly360
• Swiftly the sea-mews back from the outsea, bearing the cry
• Of the troubled deep to the land, and when the sea-coots play
• On the wave-forsaken strand, when the heron afar doth stray
• From her home in the fens, and over the high clouds soareth away.
• When wind is imminent, oft shalt thou see a sudden star365
• Slip headlong down from the sky, and behind it a long white bar
• Lies on the blackness of night, a splendour trailing afar.
• Light straws and fallen leaves oft flutter in fairy race,
• Or feathers cling together, and sport on the water’s face.
• But when from the realm of the fierce North-wind it lightens, and when370
• The East and the West-wind’s cloudy halls are thundering, then
• All trenches are brimming, the land is flooded, all seafaring men
• Furl streaming sails. Never cometh a storm unheralded:
• Sometimes, as it rolls through the mountain-gorges, the cranes have fled
• High-soaring before it: the heifer, her eyes upturned to the sky,375
• With wide-spread nostrils hath snuffed the breeze rushing gustily by:
• Shrill-crying around the pools the swallow her flight hath been winging:
• Their immemorial plaint the frogs in the fen have been singing:
• Tunnelling oft a strait path, forth from her earth-roofed shrines
• The ant hath borne her eggs: the bow, on the cloud as it shines,380
• Drinks vapour up: the battalion of rooks, from their feeding-ground flying,
• With clashing of wings come thronging, with sound of a multitude crying.
• All manner of deep-sea birds, and the marish-fowl that feed
• Through many a pleasant pool in Cayster’s Asian mead—
• Thou shalt see them with showers of spray their shoulders eagerly splashing,385
• Now meeting the surf with their heads, now into the billows dashing,
• And aimlessly revelling on, as it were in a passion of washing.
• The trumpet-tongued rogue raven shouts to the rain his command,
• And stalks, sole sentinel he of the sea-forsaken sand.
• Yea, even the handmaids, carding the wool in nightlong toil,390

• Foresee the storm, when they mark in the burning lamp the oil
• Sputter and flash, and a shroud around the lamp-wick coil.
• Yea, sunshine too after rain, and the cloudless sky’s return
• Canst thou foresee, and by sure and certain tokens discern.
• For the sharp spear-points of the stars seem then not dulled to thine eyes,395
• Nor appeareth the moon to her brother’s rays beholden to rise,
• Nor delicate fleeces of cloud drift over the heaven’s face,
• Nor halcyons dear to the Sea-queen expand to the sun’s warm rays
• Their wings on the shore; and swine, the unclean beasts, in their jaws
• Forget to toss to and fro loose wisps of hay and straws.400
• But the clouds sink down to the hollows, and lie as asleep on the plain.
• Keeping time with the sunset, the owl from her watchtower’s height in vain
• Calls through the gloaming, repeating her one monotonous strain.
• High up, a speck in the limpid air, doth Nisus soar,
• And Scylla suffers vengeance for that bright lock that she shore.405
• Wheresoever she cleaves with her pinions in flight the impalpable air,
• Lo, vengeful, relentless, with hiss of the rushing of wings is he there,
• Nisus, hard on her tracks: when he for his swoop towers high,
• Cleaving impalpable air with wings terror-blown doth she fly.
• Then, as with voices suppressed, do the rooks three times repeat,410
• Yea, four, their low clear notes: with some strange rapture sweet
• Exulting, again and again amidst their high-built bowers
• They clamour through screens of leaves: they rejoice, now that past are the showers,
• To return to their tiny fledglings again and their happy nests.
• It is not, I trow, that heaven hath implanted within their breasts415
• Wit more than man’s, or Fate foreknowledge of things to be.
• No, but when storm and the sky’s ever varying vapour-sea
• Have shifted their channels, and heaven, with the south-wind’s burden wet,
• Closes the pores late open, and loosens the erst close-set,
• Then the form of their minds is altered, their breasts with emotions are stirred420
• Far other than when the blast drave onward the black cloud-herd.
• Hence cometh the chorus of birds that make meads ring with their notes,
• Hence cometh the joy of the cattle, the rooks’ exultant throats.

• But and if thou wilt mark the sun’s swift race, and the moons that go
• In procession one after other, thou never shalt fail to foreknow425
• The morrow, shalt never be duped by a fair night’s treacherous show.
• If the moon, as she gathers her fires when anew they return to the sky,
• Have enclosed ’twixt her horns bedimmed a space black utterly,
• For the husbandman and for the seaman are torrents of rain in store:
• But if with a maiden blush her face be mantled o’er,430

• Wind cometh: Phoebe the golden for wind glows red evermore.
• But if on her fourth night’s rising—for this is the sign most sure—
• Through the heaven with horns unblunted she rides in radiance pure,
• Then all that day, and its offspring that follow in its train
• On to the end of the month, shall be free from wind and from rain:435
• And the shipmen, from peril delivered, shall pay their vows by the sea
• Unto Glaucus, to Ino’s son Melicerta, and Panope.
• The sun too—at rising, and when mid the billows his course is run—
• Shall give to thee tokens; the surest of tokens attend the sun,
• Alike at morning-tide and when stars rise over the earth.440
• When he blurreth his splendour with fleck and stain at its very birth,
• Cloud-hidden, and out from the midst of his disc his glory flees,
• Then fear thou rain; for the south-wind, mischief-boding to trees
• And to harvest-fields and to flocks, presseth onward fast from the deep.
• Or when on the verge of daybreak his rays wide-parted leap445
• Forth through rifts in the clouds, or when from Tithonus’ bed
• Pale riseth the Dawn, from the couch with saffron petals spread,
• Ah then for the mellowing grapes will the tendril’s shield be frail,
• So thick and fast on the house-roof crackles the arrowy hail.
• This too shall it profit yet more to remember—when now from the sky450
• He sinks, having traversed his course, full oftentimes then we espy
• Over the face of the sun the changeful colours trail.
• Sea-green giveth warning of rain, flame-red of an easterly gale:
• But if on his ruddy fire dark spots shall begin to lie,
• One seething fury of wind and cloud shall be earth and sky.455
• Let no man counsel me on a night like that from the land
• To launch on the deep, nor to pluck from the shore the hawser-band!
• But if, when at morn he brings and at eventide buries the day,
• His disc shall be clear and bright, thee let no clouds dismay,
• For against the blue shalt thou see the trees in a north-wind sway.460
• What evening brings at the waning of day, from whence drive fast
• The fairweather clouds on the wind, what plotteth the rain-laden blast,
• Hereof shall the sun give tokens. Who dares arraign the Sun
• For a liar? Oft, when rebellion’s foot moves stealthily on,
• He warns, and when treason and veiled war onward-surging come.465
• He too, when Caesar was murdered, had pity on orphaned Rome.
• In lurid gloom did he shroud his face’s glory-light,
• Till shuddered a godless world with dread of eternal night.
• Nor he alone—earth too and the sea-plains in that hour,
• Yea, hounds unclean and birds whose shriek hath ominous power,470

• Gave token. How oft have we seen the forges where Cyclopes toil
• Burst, and o’er plains ’neath Etna the waves of lava boil
• Whirling up fire-balls and molten rocks like flaming oil!
• Germany heard o’er her skies a thunder of battle roar:
• Shuddered the Alps with earthquake, and shook as never before:475
• Dim, utter-silent woods heard suddenly far-ringing cries
• As of multitudes: phantoms haggard and pale in wondrous wise
• In the darkness appeared: from the throats of brutes did a man’s voice sound—
• ’Twas awful!—the earth yawned wide, swift rivers stopped spell-bound:
• In temples ivory wept, and bronzes in sweat were drowned.480
• Poured over his banks Eridanus, monarch of rivers, and whirled
• Whole woods on his madding crest, and o’er all the lowlands hurled
• Herds with their steadings. Nor ceased through all those days of fear
• Dark doom-denouncing threads in the victims’ flesh to appear,
• Nor the wells to flow with blood, nor the cities builded on high485
• To ring through the shuddering night with the howling wolves’ long cry.
• Never before from heavens of cloudless blue fell more
• Thunderbolts, never blazed dread comets so oft before.
• No marvel that ranks of Rome by Philippi were seen again
• Clashing with brother-arms in the grapple of battle-strain.490
• This horror the Gods endured, that our blood should fertilize
• Emathia-land and the far-stretching fields of Haemus twice.
• Ay, and a day shall come, when the yeoman, plying his toil,
• As on those far borders with curved ploughshare he upheaveth the soil,
• Shall light upon pikes by rust made one red honeycomb:495
• His ponderous mattock shall clang upon helms filled only with loam;
• He shall marvelling stare at the giant bones in their rifted tomb.
• Gods of our sires, of our birth-land, Romulus, Mother divine,
• Vesta, who wardest Tiber and Rome’s own Palatine,
• That in any wise this our Hero should succour a world laid low500
• Forbid not ye! Our blood hath expiated enow
• Troy’s broken troth and Laomedon’s perjury long ago.
• Long have the halls of the skies, O Caesar, been jealous that we
• Possess thee, and murmur that triumphs of earth should be dear unto thee,
• In a world where right and wrong are reversed, in a world of war,505
• Of multitudinous forms of crime, whence banished afar
• Is respect for the plough: the yeomen are marched from a mourning land,
• The sickle’s gracious curve is reforged to the grim straight brand.
• Here doth Euphrates waken the war, Germania there:
• Treaties are broken by neighbour cities: arms these bear510

• Against those: unnatural strife is raging the whole world o’er.
• ’Tis as when through the wide-flung barriers racing chariots pour:
• Lap by lap do they quicken, the driver vainly strains
• At the curb, hurried on by his steeds, neither hearkens the car to the reins.