Georgics

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