Georgics

And tame with culture the wild fruits, lest earth

Lie idle. O blithe to make all Ismarus

One forest of the wine-god, and to clothe

With olives huge Tabernus! And be thou

At hand, and with me ply the voyage of toil

I am bound on, O my glory, O thou that art

Justly the chiefest portion of my fame,

Maecenas, and on this wide ocean launched

Spread sail like wings to waft thee. Not that I

With my poor verse would comprehend the whole,

Nay, though a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths

Were mine, a voice of iron; be thou at hand,

Skirt but the nearer coast-line; see the shore

Is in our grasp; not now with feigned song

Through winding bouts and tedious preludings

Shall I detain thee.

Those that lift their head

Into the realms of light spontaneously,

Fruitless indeed, but blithe and strenuous spring,

Since Nature lurks within the soil. And yet

Even these, should one engraft them, or transplant

To well-drilled trenches, will anon put of

Their woodland temper, and, by frequent tilth,

To whatso craft thou summon them, make speed

To follow. So likewise will the barren shaft

That from the stock-root issueth, if it be

Set out with clear space amid open fields:

Now the tree-mother's towering leaves and boughs

Darken, despoil of increase as it grows,

And blast it in the bearing. Lastly, that

Which from shed seed ariseth, upward wins

But slowly, yielding promise of its shade

To late-born generations; apples wane

Forgetful of their former juice, the grape

Bears sorry clusters, for the birds a prey.

Soothly on all must toil be spent, and all

Trained to the trench and at great cost subdued.

But reared from truncheons olives answer best,

As vines from layers, and from the solid wood

The Paphian myrtles; while from suckers spring

Both hardy hazels and huge ash, the tree

That rims with shade the brows of Hercules,

And acorns dear to the Chaonian sire:

So springs the towering palm too, and the fir

Destined to spy the dangers of the deep.

But the rough arbutus with walnut-fruit

Is grafted; so have barren planes ere now

Stout apples borne, with chestnut-flower the beech,

The mountain-ash with pear-bloom whitened o'er,

And swine crunched acorns 'neath the boughs of elms.

Nor is the method of inserting eyes

And grafting one: for where the buds push forth

Amidst the bark, and burst the membranes thin,

Even on the knot a narrow rift is made,

Wherein from some strange tree a germ they pen,

And to the moist rind bid it cleave and grow.

Or, otherwise, in knotless trunks is hewn

A breach, and deep into the solid grain

A path with wedges cloven; then fruitful slips

Are set herein, and—no long time—behold!

To heaven upshot with teeming boughs, the tree

Strange leaves admires and fruitage not its own.

Nor of one kind alone are sturdy elms,

Willow and lotus, nor the cypress-trees

Of Ida; nor of self-same fashion spring

Fat olives, orchades, and radii

And bitter-berried pausians, no, nor yet

Apples and the forests of Alcinous;

Nor from like cuttings are Crustumian pears

And Syrian, and the heavy hand-fillers.

Not the same vintage from our trees hangs down,

Which Lesbos from Methymna's tendril plucks.

Vines Thasian are there, Mareotids white,

These apt for richer soils, for lighter those:

Psithian for raisin-wine more useful, thin

Lageos, that one day will try the feet

And tie the tongue: purples and early-ripes,

And how, O Rhaetian, shall I hymn thy praise?

Yet cope not therefore with Falernian bins.

Vines Aminaean too, best-bodied wine,

To which the Tmolian bows him, ay, and king

Phanaeus too, and, lesser of that name,

Argitis, wherewith not a grape can vie

For gush of wine-juice or for length of years.

Nor thee must I pass over, vine of Rhodes,

Welcomed by gods and at the second board,

Nor thee, Bumastus, with plump clusters swollen.

But lo! how many kinds, and what their names,

There is no telling, nor doth it boot to tell;

Who lists to know it, he too would list to learn

How many sand-grains are by Zephyr tossed

On Libya's plain, or wot, when Eurus falls

With fury on the ships, how many waves

Come rolling shoreward from the Ionian sea.

Not that all soils can all things bear alike.

Willows by water-courses have their birth,

Alders in miry fens; on rocky heights

The barren mountain-ashes; on the shore

Myrtles throng gayest; Bacchus, lastly, loves

The bare hillside, and yews the north wind's chill.