Virgil

“ Soon the labour of the cornfield too increased; vile mildew must devour the stalk and the thistle lift over the field his lazy spears: the crop dwindles, a rough forest of clivers and burs advances, and fruitless darnel and barren wild-oats reign over the shining tilth. Nay, except thou wilt harass the soil with ceaseless mattock, and frighten off the birds with clamour, and thy pruning-hook lop the darkening rustic shade and thy prayers call down the rain, ah! all in vain wilt thou eye the garner pile of another, and allay thine own hunger from the shaken oak in the woodland. ”

“ But not so where the tribes of Scythia border the Maeotic wave and the yellow Danube rolls thick with sand, or where outstretched Rhodope runs back under the mid pole. There they keep their herds shut in stall, and no grass shows on the plain or leaf on the tree; but earth lies featureless in mounded snow and deep fields of ice that rise to seven fathoms, under eternal winter and eternal breath of icy north-west winds. Nor ever does the sun pierce that pallid gloom, neither when he rides his horses up the steep of sky nor when he slakes his headlong chariot in Ocean's ruddy floor. ”

“ None in those days, Daphnis, drove the pastured oxen to cool streams; no four-footed thing tasted the river nor touched the grassy sward. Daphnis, the wild hills and the woodlands repeat how even Punic lions bemoaned thy decease. Daphnis ordered the harnessing of Armenian tigresses to the car; Daphnis the processions of Bacchus' revellers and the soft leafage wound round their supple shafts. As the vine adorns her tree, as her grapes the vine; as bulls the herds, as corn the rich fields; so thou art all the ornament of thy people ”

“ Amid the water, whether it stagnate or run, cast large stones and willow-boughs crosswise, that they may have many a bridge to stand on and spread their wings to the summer sun if haply a shower overtake them or a gust of wind plunge them in the watery realm. All round green casia and far-fragrant wild thyme and wealth of heavy-scented savory should bloom, and violet beds drink the channelled spring. Let thy hives moreover, whether they be stitched of hollow bark or woven from pliant osier, have narrow doorways; for the honey freezes in winter cold, and again melts and wastes in the heat. ”

“ Beyond these, she is neither fit for breeding nor strong for the plough; between them, while the lusty youth of thy flock endures, let loose the males, put thy herds early to breeding, and generation by generation keep up the succession of thy stock. In this poor mortal life the fairest day is ever the first to fly; sickness and melancholy age advance, and toil and hard death's pitilessness sweep us away. Ever will there be some stock that thou wouldst exchange: then ever replace them, and that thou miss not the lost, be beforehand in selecting the young of the herd year by year. ”

“ Love conquers all: let us too yield to Love.
This shall suffice, goddesses of Pieria, that your poet has sung while he sate and wove a basket of slim mallow shoots: you will make this precious for Gallus: for Gallus, love of whom grows in me as fast every hour as the green alder shoots up when spring is young. Let us arise; the shade is wont to be heavy on singers: the juniper shade is heavy: shade too hurts the corn. Go home full-fed, the Evening Star comes, go, my she-goats. ”

“ Me.—Clad in light, Daphnis marvels at Heaven's untrodden floor and sees the clouds and the stars beneath his feet. Therefore gay pleasure reigns in the forest and all the countryside, among Pan and the shepherds and the Dryad maidens. Neither does the wolf plot ambushes to the flock nor any hunting-nets ensnarement of the deer: gentle Daphnis loves peace. The unshorn mountains themselves cast echoes of gladness to the skies; the very rocks, the very copses now resound in song: A god, a god is he, O Menalcas. ”

“ For the rest, when the golden sun has driven winter routed underground and flung wide the sky in summer light, forthwith they range over lawn and wood, and harvest the shining blossoms and sip lightly of the streams; then glad with some strange delight, they nurture their brood in the nest, then deftly forge the fresh wax and mould the clammy honey. Then, as looking up thou seest their armies swarming skyward from the hives and floating through the clear summer air, and wonderest at their dim cloud trailing in the wind, mark! ever they steer for sweet water and leafy shelter. ”

“ I stake this heifer—lest haply thou draw back, she comes twice to the milking pail and withal feeds two calves from her udder—say thou what thou wilt stake with me in the strife.
M.—Of the flock I dare not stake aught with thee: for I have a father at home, and a wicked stepmother, and twice a day both count the flock, and one of them the kids. But, what thyself wilt confess far excels it, since be mad thou wilt—I will stake cups of beechwood, carved work of the divine Alcimedon, where a clinging vine raised by his light graver enfolds pale ivy with her scattered berries. ”

“ After birth all the care passes to the calves in turn; and immediately they brand the name and mark of race on such as they choose to rear for stock-breeding, or to keep sacred for the altar, or to cleave the soil and upturn the broken clods on the ridgy meadow. The rest of the herd are at pasture on the grassy green; such as thou wilt shape to pursuit and profit of husbandry, instruct while yet ungrown, and set on the road of training while their minds are light in youth and their age flexible. ”

“ Co.—Mossed springs and grass softer than sleep, and green arbutus that covers you with thin shade, shield the midsummer from the flock; now parching summer is coming, now the buds swell on the glad vine-shoot.
Th.—Here is the hearth and resinous billets; here the fire ever burns high and the doorposts are black with constant soot: here we care as much for the freezing North as the wolf for the flock's multitude, or rivers in flood for their banks. ”

“ Often have I seen, when the husbandman was marching in his reapers to the golden fields and just cutting the slim-stalked barley, how all the winds, clashing in battle, would tear right from the roots and fling high whole breadths of heavy corn; in so black a gust would the storm sweep light blade and flying straw away. Often, likewise the waters of heaven descend in infinite armies, and clouds charged from the deep thicken into foul weather black with thundershowers: the sky pours sheer down and washes away the glad crops and labours of the oxen with flooding rain ”

“ Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
Fetch ashes, Amaryllis, out of doors, and fling them across thy head into the running brook: and look not back. With these I will assail Daphnis: nothing cares he for gods, nothing for songs.
Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
See! the embers on the altar have caught with a flickering flame, themselves, of their own accord, while I delay to fetch them. Be it for good! something there is for sure; and Hylax barks in the doorway. May we believe? or do lovers fashion dreams of their own? ”

“ ECLOGUE V.—DAPHNIS.
Menalcas. Mopsus.
Me.—Why not, O Mopsus, since we are met so good a pair, thou to breathe in the slim reeds, I to utter the verses, sit down here among the mingled elms and hazels?
Mo.—Thou art the older: it is fit I should obey thee, Menalcas, whether where western breezes shift the flickering shadows or rather the cavern be our resting-place. See, how over the cavern the woodland wild vine scatters her thin clusters. ”

“ When the Scales make daylight and sleep equal in hours and just halve the globe between light and shadow, set your bulls at work, O men! sow the barley-fields, right into the showery skirts of frost-bound midwinter: no less is it time to cover in earth the flax-plant and the corn-poppy, and to urge on the belated ploughs while the dry soil allows it, while the clouds hang aloft. ”

“ Themselves in caverns deep sunken under earth they fleet their careless leisure, and roll to the hearth oak from the wood-pile and whole elms to feed the fire. Here they pass the night in games, and with beer and bitter meaths joyously counterfeit draughts of the vine. Such is the wild race of men that lies under the seven stars of the utmost North, buffeted by Rhipaean gales and wrapped in the tawny fur of beasts. ”

“ These are the choicer breed; from their combs at the ordained season of the skies thou shalt squeeze sweet honey, and yet less sweet than crystal-clear to soften the harsh taste of wine.
But when the swarms fly aimlessly at play in the sky, and despise their combs and leave their house to grow cold, thou shalt stop their light-minded and idle game. Nor is it much work to stop; tear off the wings of the kings; while they linger, not a bee will dare to set out on their aery way or move standard from the camp. ”

“ If from far thou seest one passing oftener into the languid shade, or more listlessly cropping the tops of grass and following behind the rest, or lying down in mid-pasture of the meadow and retiring alone before deepening night, straightway check the evil with thy knife ere the terrible infection spread through the heedless multitude. Not so heavy comes the rush of rain when a squall sweeps over the sea as diseases multiply in the flock: neither do ailments seize them singly, but whole summer-pastures at a stroke, the flock and the flock's hope together, and all the race root and branch ”

“ The snake too shall die, and die the treacherous poison-plant: Assyrian spice shall grow all up and down. But when once thou shalt be able now to read the glories of heroes and thy fathers' deeds, and to know Virtue as she is, slowly the plain shall grow golden with the soft corn-spike, and the reddening grape trail from the wild briar, and hard oaks shall drip dew of honey. ”

“ Age is cold to love, and vainly drags on the ungrateful task, and when the battle is come, as it were a fire blazing without strength among stubble, he rages to no avail. Therefore spirit and youth thou wilt mark beyond all; then his other merits, his parents' breeding, and his own grief at defeat and exultation in victory. Seest thou not when in headlong contest chariots shoot into the racecourse and pour streaming from the barrier, when the young drivers' hopes are at height, and throbbing fear drains their riotous hearts? they ply the curling lash and stoop loose over the rein ”

“ Great service withal he does the fields who breaks their dull clods with the mattock and drags osier hurdles over them, nor from high Olympus does golden Ceres regard him in vain; or he who, raising ridges along the furrowed plain, again turns his plough to break them across, and labours earth incessantly and makes the fields own his sway.
Pray for dripping midsummers and clear winters, O husbandmen; from winter dust the spelt grows strongest, and the field is glad; never does Mysia triumph in such pride of tillage, or Gargarus himself wonder at his harvests. ”

“ All ask, Whence this love of thine? Apollo came: Gallus, why this madness? he said: thy love Lycoris amid the snows and amid the rough camp has followed another. Came too Silvanus with rustic bravery on his head, shaking his blossomed fennels and large lilies. Pan god of Arcady came, whom our eyes have seen, red with blood-stained elderberries and vermilion. Shall there be a limit? he said: Love recks not aught of this. Neither is cruel Love satiated with tears, nor the grasses with the rills, nor bees with cytisus, nor she-goats with leafage. ”

“ I have loosed the tempest on my blossoms, woe's me, and the wild boars on my crystal springs. From whom fliest thou, ah infatuate? Gods likewise have dwelt in the woodland, and Paris of Dardania. Pallas may keep the city towers that herself hath built: us before all else let the woodland satisfy. The grim lioness pursues the wolf, the wolf in turn the she-goat; the wanton she-goat pursues the flowering cytisus; as Corydon does thee, O Alexis, each drawn by his own delight. ”

“ And all at once when their inward longing kindles into flame, (in spring the rather, since in spring their vital heat returns,) they all wheel and stand facing the West on rocky heights, and snuff the light breezes, and often without bodily union, wind-impregned, wonderful to tell, over crag and cliff and deep-sunken vale they scatter in flight not to thy springs, O East, nor to the rising of the sun, but towards the north and northwest winds, or whence the South issues wrapped in gloom and saddens heaven with his chilly rains. ”

“ For the field is drained by flax-harvest and wheat-harvest, drained by the slumber-steeped poppy of Lethe, but yet rotation lightens the labour; only scorn not to soak the dry soil with fattening dung, nor to scatter grimy ashes over the exhausted lands. Thus too the fields find rest in change of crop; nor meanwhile are thanks lost on unploughed land. Often likewise it is well to burn barren fields and consume the light stubble in crackling flame: whether that earth thence conceives secret strength and sustenance, or all her evil is melted away and her useless moisture sweats out in the fire ”

“ Their king safe, all are of one mind; he lost, they break allegiance, plunder the honey-cells themselves have built, and break open the plaited combs. He is guardian of their labours; him they regard, and all gather round in murmuring throng and encompass him in their swarms; and often lift him on their shoulders and shield him in war with their bodies, and seek through wounds a glorious death.
Noting this and led by these instances, certain have claimed for bees a share of some divine intelligence and a draught of the springs of heaven. ”

“ Myself will lead thee, when the sun has kindled the heat of noon, when the grass is athirst and the shade now grows more grateful to the flock, to the old man's covert, his retreat from the weary waves, that while he lies asleep thou mayest lightly assail him. ”