No game but hopeless love my thoughts pursue:
Once more, ye nymphs, and songs, and sounding woods,
Lov alters not for us his hard decrees,
Not though beneath the Thracian clime we freeze,
Or Italy's indulgent heav'n forego,
And in mid-winter tread Sithonian snow;
Or, when the barks of elms are scorch'd, we keep
On Meroe's burning plains the Libyan sheep.
In hell, and earth, and seas, and heav'n above,
Love conquers all; and we must yield to love."
My Muses, here your sacred raptures end:
The verse was what I ow'd my suff'ring friend.
This while I sung, my sorrows 1 deceiv'd,
And bendingosiers into baskets weav'd.
The song, because inspir'd by you, shall shine;
And Gallus will approve, because 'tis mine-
Gallus, for whom my holy flames renew,
Each hour, and ev'ry moment rise in view;
As alders, in the spring, their boles extend,
And heave so fiercely, that the bark they rend,
Now let us rise: for hoarseness oft invades
The singer's voice, who sings beneath the shades.
From juniper unwholesome dews distil,
That blast the sooty corn, the withering herbage kill.
Away, my goats, away! for you have brows'd your fill.
The poet, in the beginning of this book, propounds the general design of each Georgic: and, after a solemn invocation of all the gods who are any way related to his subject, he addresses himself in particular to Augustus, whom he compliments with divinity; and after strikes into his business. He shows the different kinds of tillage proper to different soils, traces out the original of agriculture, gives a catalogue of the husbandman's tools, specifies the employments peculiar to each season, describes the changes of the weather, with the signs in heaven and earth that forebode them; instances many of the prodigies that happened near the time of Julius Cæsar's death; and shuts up all with a supplication to the gods for the safety of Augustus, and the preservation of Rome.
WHAT makes a plenteous harvest, when to turn
The fruitful soil, and when to sow the corn;
The care of sheep, of oxen, and of kine;
And how to raise on elms the teeming vine;
The birth and genius of the frugal bee,
I sing, Mæcenas, and I sing to thee.
Ye deities! who fields and plains protect,
Who rule the seasons, and the year direct,
Bacchus and fost'ring Ceres, pow'rs divine,
Who gave us corn for mast, for water, wine-
Ye Fauns, propitious to the rural swains,
Ye Nymphs that haunt the mountains and the plains,
Join in my work, and to my numbers bring
Your needful succour; for your gifts I sing.
And thou, whose trident struck the teeming earth,
And made a passage for the courser's birth;
And thou, for whom the Cean shore sustains
The milky herds, that gaze the flow'ry plains;
And thou, the shepherds' tutelary god,
Leave, for a while, O Pan, thy lov'd abode;
And, if Arcadian fleeces be thy care,
From fields and mountains to my song repair.
Inventor, Pallas, of the fatt'ning oil,
Thou founder of the plough and ploughman's toil:
And thou, whose hands the shroud-like cypress rear;
Come, all ye gods and goddesses, that wear
The rural honours, and increase the year;
You, who supply the ground with seeds of grain;
And you, who swell those seeds with kindly rain;
And chiefly thou, whose undetermin'd state
Is yet the bus'ness of the gods, debate,
Whether in after-times, to be declar'd,
The patron of the world, and Rome's peculiar guard.
Or o'er the fruits and seasons to preside,
And the round circuit of the year to guide-
Pow'rful of blessings, which thou strew'st around,
And with thy goddess mother's myrtle crown'd.
Or wilt thou, Cæsar, choose the wat'ry reign
To smoothe the surges, and correct the main?
Then mariners, in storms, to thee shall pray;
E'en utmost Thule shall thy pow'r obey;
And Neptune shall resign the fasces of the sea.
The wat'ry virgins for thy bed shall strive,
And Tethys all her waves in dowry give.
Or wilt thou bless our summers with thy rays,
And, seated near the Balance, poise the days,
Where, in the void of heav'n, a space is free,
Betwixt the Scorpion and the Maid for thee?
The Scorpion, ready to receive thy laws,
Yields half his region, and contracts his claws.
Whatever part of heav'n thou shalt obtain,
(For let not hell presume of such a reign;
Nor let so dire a thirst of empire move
Thy mind, to leave thy kindred gods above;
5
Though Greece admires Elysium's blest retreat,
Through Proserpine affects her silent seat,
And, importun'd by Ceres to remove,
Prefers the fields below to those above)
Be thou propitious, Cæsar! guide my course,
And to my bold endeavours add thy force:
Pity the poet's and the ploughman's cares;
Int'rest thy greatness in our mean affairs,
And use thyself betimes to hear and grant our pray'rs. While yet the spring is young, while earth unbinds
Her frozen bosom to the western winds;
While mountain snows dissolve against the sun,
And streams, yet new, from precipices run;
E'en in this early dawning of the year,
Produce the plough, and yoke the sturdy steer,
And goad him till he groans beneath his toil,
Till the bright share is buried in the soil.
That crop rewards the greedy peasant's pains,
Which twice the sun, and twice the cold sustains,
And bursts the crowded barns with more than pro-
mis'd gains.
But, ere we stir the yet unbroken ground,
The various course of seasons must be found;
The weather and the setting of the winds,
The culture suiting to the sev'ral kinds
Of seeds and plants, and what will thrive and rise,
And what the genius of the soil denies.
Thisground with Bacchus, that with Ceres, suits:
That other loads the trees with happy fruits:
A fourth, with grass unbidden, decks the ground.
Thus Tmolus is with yellow saffron crown'd:
India black ebon and white iv'ry bears;
And soft Idume weeps her od❜rous tears.
Thus Pontus sends her beaver stones from far,
And naked Spaniards temper steel for war:
Epirus, for th' Elean chariot, breeds
(In hopes of palms) a race of running steeds.
This is th' original contract; these the laws
Impos'd by Nature, and by Nature's cause,
On sundry places, when Deucalion hurl'd
His mother's entrails on the desert world;
Whence men, a hard laborious kind, were born.
Then borrow part of winter for thy corn;
And early, with thy team, the glebe in furrows turn;
That, while the turf lies open and unbound,
Succeeding suns may bake the mellow ground.
But, if the soil be barren, only scar
The surface, and but lightly print the share,
When cold Arcturus rises with the sun:
Lest wicked weeds the corn should overrun
In wat'ry soils; or lest the barren sand
Should suck the moisture from the thirsty land.
Both these unhappy soils the swain forbears,
And keeps a sabbath of alternate years,
That the spent earth may gather heart again,
And, better'd by cessation, bear the grain.
At least where vetches, pulse, and tares, have stood, 110
And stalks of lupines grew (a stubborn wood,)
Th' ensuing season, in return, may bear
The bearded product of the golden year:
For flax and oats will burn the tender field,
And sleepy poppies harmful harvest yield.
But sweet vicissitudes of rest and toil
Make easy labour and renew the soil,
Yet sprinkle sordid ashes all around,
And load with fatt'ning dung the fallow ground.
Thus change of seeds for meagre soils is best;
And earth manur'd, not idle, though at rest.
Long practice has a sure improvement found, With kindled fires to burn the barren ground, When the light stubble, to the flames resign'd, Is driv'n along, and crackles in the wind. Whether from hence the hollow womb of earth Is warm'd with secret strength for better birth; Or, when the latent vice is cur'd by fire, Redundant humours through the pores expire;
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