Georgics

The sleek Etruscan at the altar blows

His ivory pipe, and on the curved dish

We lay the reeking entrails. If to rear

Cattle delight thee rather, steers, or lambs,

Or goats that kill the tender plants, then seek

Full-fed Tarentum's glades and distant fields,

Or such a plain as luckless Mantua lost

Whose weedy water feeds the snow-white swan:

There nor clear springs nor grass the flocks will fail,

And all the day-long browsing of thy herds

Shall the cool dews of one brief night repair.

Land which the burrowing share shows dark and rich,

With crumbling soil—for this we counterfeit

In ploughing—for corn is goodliest; from no field

More wains thou'lt see wend home with plodding steers;

Or that from which the husbandman in spleen

Has cleared the timber, and o'erthrown the copse

That year on year lay idle, and from the roots

Uptorn the immemorial haunt of birds;

They banished from their nests have sought the skies;

But the rude plain beneath the ploughshare's stroke

Starts into sudden brightness. For indeed

The starved hill-country gravel scarce serves the bees

With lowly cassias and with rosemary;

Rough tufa and chalk too, by black water-worms

Gnawed through and through, proclaim no soils beside

So rife with serpent-dainties, or that yield

Such winding lairs to lurk in. That again,

Which vapoury mist and flitting smoke exhales,

Drinks moisture up and casts it forth at will,

Which, ever in its own green grass arrayed,

Mars not the metal with salt scurf of rust—

That shall thine elms with merry vines enwreathe;

That teems with olive; that shall thy tilth prove kind

To cattle, and patient of the curved share.

Such ploughs rich Capua, such the coast that skirts

Thy ridge, Vesuvius, and the Clanian flood,

Acerrae's desolation and her bane.

How each to recognize now hear me tell.

Dost ask if loose or passing firm it be—

Since one for corn hath liking, one for wine,

The firmer sort for Ceres, none too loose

For thee, Lyaeus?—with scrutinizing eye

First choose thy ground, and bid a pit be sunk

Deep in the solid earth, then cast the mould

All back again, and stamp the surface smooth.

If it suffice not, loose will be the land,

More meet for cattle and for kindly vines;

But if, rebellious, to its proper bounds

The soil returns not, but fills all the trench

And overtops it, then the glebe is gross;

Look for stiff ridges and reluctant clods,

And with strong bullocks cleave the fallow crust.

Salt ground again, and bitter, as 'tis called—

Barren for fruits, by tilth untamable,

Nor grape her kind, nor apples their good name

Maintaining—will in this wise yield thee proof:

Stout osier-baskets from the rafter-smoke,

And strainers of the winepress pluck thee down;

Hereinto let that evil land, with fresh

Spring-water mixed, be trampled to the full;

The moisture, mark you, will ooze all away,

In big drops issuing through the osier-withes,

But plainly will its taste the secret tell,

And with a harsh twang ruefully distort

The mouths of them that try it. Rich soil again

We learn on this wise: tossed from hand to hand

Yet cracks it never, but pitch-like, as we hold,

Clings to the fingers. A land with moisture rife

Breeds lustier herbage, and is more than meet

Prolific. Ah I may never such for me

O'er-fertile prove, or make too stout a show

At the first earing! Heavy land or light

The mute self-witness of its weight betrays.

A glance will serve to warn thee which is black,

Or what the hue of any. But hard it is

To track the signs of that pernicious cold:

Pines only, noxious yews, and ivies dark

At times reveal its traces.

All these rules

Regarding, let your land, ay, long before,

Scorch to the quick, and into trenches carve

The mighty mountains, and their upturned clods

Bare to the north wind, ere thou plant therein

The vine's prolific kindred. Fields whose soil

Is crumbling are the best: winds look to that,

And bitter hoar-frosts, and the delver's toil

Untiring, as he stirs the loosened glebe.

But those, whose vigilance no care escapes,

Search for a kindred site, where first to rear

A nursery for the trees, and eke whereto

Soon to translate them, lest the sudden shock

From their new mother the young plants estrange.

Nay, even the quarter of the sky they brand

Upon the bark, that each may be restored,

As erst it stood, here bore the southern heats,

Here turned its shoulder to the northern pole;

So strong is custom formed in early years.

Whether on hill or plain 'tis best to plant

Your vineyard first inquire. If on some plain