Georgics

Mark too the earth by outland tillers tamed,

And Eastern homes of Arabs, and tattooed

Geloni; to all trees their native lands

Allotted are; no clime but India bears

Black ebony; the branch of frankincense

Is Saba's sons' alone; why tell to thee

Of balsams oozing from the perfumed wood,

Or berries of acanthus ever green?

Of Aethiop forests hoar with downy wool,

Or how the Seres comb from off the leaves

Their silky fleece? Of groves which India bears,

Ocean's near neighbour, earth's remotest nook,

Where not an arrow-shot can cleave the air

Above their tree-tops? yet no laggards they,

When girded with the quiver! Media yields

The bitter juices and slow-lingering taste

Of the blest citron-fruit, than which no aid

Comes timelier, when fierce step-dames drug the cup

With simples mixed and spells of baneful power,

To drive the deadly poison from the limbs.

Large the tree's self in semblance like a bay,

And, showered it not a different scent abroad,

A bay it had been; for no wind of heaven

Its foliage falls; the flower, none faster, clings;

With it the Medes for sweetness lave the lips,

And ease the panting breathlessness of age.

But no, not Mede-land with its wealth of woods,

Nor Ganges fair, and Hermus thick with gold,

Can match the praise of Italy; nor Ind,

Nor Bactria, nor Panchaia, one wide tract

Of incense-teeming sand. Here never bulls

With nostrils snorting fire upturned the sod

Sown with the monstrous dragon's teeth, nor crop

Of warriors bristled thick with lance and helm;

But heavy harvests and the Massic juice

Of Bacchus fill its borders, overspread

With fruitful flocks and olives. Hence arose

The war-horse stepping proudly o'er the plain;

Hence thy white flocks, Clitumnus, and the bull,

Of victims mightiest, which full oft have led,

Bathed in thy sacred stream, the triumph-pomp

Of Romans to the temples of the gods.

Here blooms perpetual spring, and summer here

In months that are not summer's; twice teem the flocks;

Twice doth the tree yield service of her fruit.

But ravening tigers come not nigh, nor breed

Of savage lion, nor aconite betrays

Its hapless gatherers, nor with sweep so vast

Doth the scaled serpent trail his endless coils

Along the ground, or wreathe him into spires.

Mark too her cities, so many and so proud,

Of mighty toil the achievement, town on town

Up rugged precipices heaved and reared,

And rivers undergliding ancient walls.

Or should I celebrate the sea that laves

Her upper shores and lower? or those broad lakes?

Thee, Larius, greatest and, Benacus, thee

With billowy uproar surging like the main?

Or sing her harbours, and the barrier cast

Athwart the Lucrine, and how ocean chafes

With mighty bellowings, where the Julian wave

Echoes the thunder of his rout, and through

Avernian inlets pours the Tuscan tide?

A land no less that in her veins displays

Rivers of silver, mines of copper ore,

Ay, and with gold hath flowed abundantly.

A land that reared a valiant breed of men,

The Marsi and Sabellian youth, and, schooled

To hardship, the Ligurian, and with these

The Volscian javelin-armed, the Decii too,

The Marii and Camilli, names of might,

The Scipios, stubborn warriors, ay, and thee,

Great Caesar, who in Asia's utmost bounds

With conquering arm e'en now art fending far

The unwarlike Indian from the heights of Rome.

Hail! land of Saturn, mighty mother thou

Of fruits and heroes; 'tis for thee I dare

Unseal the sacred fountains, and essay

Themes of old art and glory, as I sing

The song of Ascra through the towns of Rome.

Now for the native gifts of various soils,

What powers hath each, what hue, what natural bent

For yielding increase. First your stubborn lands

And churlish hill-sides, where are thorny fields

Of meagre marl and gravel, these delight

In long-lived olive-groves to Pallas dear.

Take for a sign the plenteous growth hard by

Of oleaster, and the fields strewn wide

With woodland berries. But a soil that's rich,

In moisture sweet exulting, and the plain

That teems with grasses on its fruitful breast,

Such as full oft in hollow mountain-dell

We view beneath us—from the craggy heights

Streams thither flow with fertilizing mud—

A plain which southward rising feeds the fern

By curved ploughs detested, this one day

Shall yield thee store of vines full strong to gush

In torrents of the wine-god; this shall be

Fruitful of grapes and flowing juice like that

We pour to heaven from bowls of gold, what time