Georgics

And nightlong makes the hard bare stones his bed,

And feeds on prickly leaf and pointed rush,

And proves himself, and butting at a tree

Learns to fling wrath into his horns, with blows

Provokes the air, and scattering clouds of sand

Makes prelude of the battle; afterward,

With strength repaired and gathered might breaks camp,

And hurls him headlong on the unthinking foe:

As in mid ocean when a wave far of

Begins to whiten, mustering from the main

Its rounded breast, and, onward rolled to land

Falls with prodigious roar among the rocks,

Huge as a very mountain: but the depths

Upseethe in swirling eddies, and disgorge

The murky sand-lees from their sunken bed.

Nay, every race on earth of men, and beasts,

And ocean-folk, and flocks, and painted birds,

Rush to the raging fire: love sways them all.

Never than then more fiercely o'er the plain

Prowls heedless of her whelps the lioness:

Nor monstrous bears such wide-spread havoc-doom

Deal through the forests; then the boar is fierce,

Most deadly then the tigress: then, alack!

Ill roaming is it on Libya's lonely plains.

Mark you what shivering thrills the horse's frame,

If but a waft the well-known gust conveys?

Nor curb can check them then, nor lash severe,

Nor rocks and caverned crags, nor barrier-floods,

That rend and whirl and wash the hills away.

Then speeds amain the great Sabellian boar,

His tushes whets, with forefoot tears the ground,

Rubs 'gainst a tree his flanks, and to and fro

Hardens each wallowing shoulder to the wound.

What of the youth, when love's relentless might

Stirs the fierce fire within his veins? Behold!

In blindest midnight how he swims the gulf

Convulsed with bursting storm-clouds! Over him

Heaven's huge gate thunders; the rock-shattered main

Utters a warning cry; nor parents' tears

Can backward call him, nor the maid he loves,

Too soon to die on his untimely pyre.

What of the spotted ounce to Bacchus dear,

Or warlike wolf-kin or the breed of dogs?

Why tell how timorous stags the battle join?

O'er all conspicuous is the rage of mares,

By Venus' self inspired of old, what time

The Potnian four with rending jaws devoured

The limbs of Glaucus. Love-constrained they roam

Past Gargarus, past the loud Ascanian flood;

They climb the mountains, and the torrents swim;

And when their eager marrow first conceives

The fire, in Spring-tide chiefly, for with Spring

Warmth doth their frames revisit, then they stand

All facing westward on the rocky heights,

And of the gentle breezes take their fill;

And oft unmated, marvellous to tell,

But of the wind impregnate, far and wide

O'er craggy height and lowly vale they scud,

Not toward thy rising, Eurus, or the sun's,

But westward and north-west, or whence up-springs

Black Auster, that glooms heaven with rainy cold.

Hence from their groin slow drips a poisonous juice,

By shepherds truly named hippomanes,

Hippomanes, fell stepdames oft have culled,

And mixed with herbs and spells of baneful bode.

Fast flies meanwhile the irreparable hour,

As point to point our charmed round we trace.

Enough of herds. This second task remains,

The wool-clad flocks and shaggy goats to treat.

Here lies a labour; hence for glory look,

Brave husbandmen. Nor doubtfully know

How hard it is for words to triumph here,

And shed their lustre on a theme so slight:

But I am caught by ravishing desire

Above the lone Parnassian steep; I love

To walk the heights, from whence no earlier track

Slopes gently downward to Castalia's spring.

Now, awful Pales, strike a louder tone.

First, for the sheep soft pencotes I decree

To browse in, till green summer's swift return;

And that the hard earth under them with straw

And handfuls of the fern be littered deep,

Lest chill of ice such tender cattle harm

With scab and loathly foot-rot. Passing thence

I bid the goats with arbute-leaves be stored,

And served with fresh spring-water, and their pens

Turned southward from the blast, to face the suns

Of winter, when Aquarius' icy beam

Now sinks in showers upon the parting year.

These too no lightlier our protection claim,

Nor prove of poorer service, howsoe'er

Milesian fleeces dipped in Tyrian reds

Repay the barterer; these with offspring teem

More numerous; these yield plenteous store of milk:

The more each dry-wrung udder froths the pail,

More copious soon the teat-pressed torrents flow.

Ay, and on Cinyps' bank the he-goats too

Their beards and grizzled chins and bristling hair

Let clip for camp-use, or as rugs to wrap

Seafaring wretches. But they browse the woods