GEORGIC I

 What makes the cornfield smile; beneath what star
 Maecenas, it is meet to turn the sod
 Or marry elm with vine; how tend the steer;
 What pains for cattle-keeping, or what proof
 Of patient trial serves for thrifty bees;-
 Such are my themes.
 O universal lights
 Most glorious! ye that lead the gliding year
 Along the sky, Liber and Ceres mild,
 If by your bounty holpen earth once changed
 Chaonian acorn for the plump wheat-ear,
 And mingled with the grape, your new-found gift,
 The draughts of Achelous; and ye Fauns
 To rustics ever kind, come foot it, Fauns
 And Dryad-maids together; your gifts I sing.
 And thou, for whose delight the war-horse first
 Sprang from earth's womb at thy great trident's stroke,
 Neptune; and haunter of the groves, for whom
 Three hundred snow-white heifers browse the brakes,
 The fertile brakes of Ceos; and clothed in power,
 Thy native forest and Lycean lawns,
 Pan, shepherd-god, forsaking, as the love
 Of thine own Maenalus constrains thee, hear
 And help, O lord of Tegea! And thou, too,
 Minerva, from whose hand the olive sprung;
 And boy-discoverer of the curved plough;
 And, bearing a young cypress root-uptorn,
 Silvanus, and Gods all and Goddesses,
 Who make the fields your care, both ye who nurse
 The tender unsown increase, and from heaven
 Shed on man's sowing the riches of your rain:
 And thou, even thou, of whom we know not yet
 What mansion of the skies shall hold thee soon,
 Whether to watch o'er cities be thy will,
 Great Caesar, and to take the earth in charge,
 That so the mighty world may welcome thee
 Lord of her increase, master of her times,
 Binding thy mother's myrtle round thy brow,
 Or as the boundless ocean's God thou come,
 Sole dread of seamen, till far Thule bow
 Before thee, and Tethys win thee to her son
 With all her waves for dower; or as a star
 Lend thy fresh beams our lagging months to cheer,
 Where 'twixt the Maid and those pursuing Claws
 A space is opening; see! red Scorpio's self
 His arms draws in, yea, and hath left thee more
 Than thy full meed of heaven: be what thou wilt-
 For neither Tartarus hopes to call thee king,
 Nor may so dire a lust of sovereignty
 E'er light upon thee, howso Greece admire
 Elysium's fields, and Proserpine not heed
 Her mother's voice entreating to return-
 Vouchsafe a prosperous voyage, and smile on this
 My bold endeavour, and pitying, even as I,
 These poor way-wildered swains, at once begin,
 Grow timely used unto the voice of prayer.
 In early spring-tide, when the icy drip
 Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr's breath
 Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then 'tis time;
 Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox,
 And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine.
 That land the craving farmer's prayer fulfils,
 Which twice the sunshine, twice the frost has felt;
 Ay, that's the land whose boundless harvest-crops
 Burst, see! the barns.
 But ere our metal cleave
 An unknown surface, heed we to forelearn
 The winds and varying temper of the sky,
 The lineal tilth and habits of the spot,
 What every region yields, and what denies.
 Here blithelier springs the corn, and here the grape,
 There earth is green with tender growth of trees
 And grass unbidden. See how from Tmolus comes
 The saffron's fragrance, ivory from Ind,
 From Saba's weakling sons their frankincense,
 Iron from the naked Chalybs, castor rank
 From Pontus, from Epirus the prize-palms
 O' the mares of Elis.
 Such the eternal bond
 And such the laws by Nature's hand imposed
 On clime and clime, e'er since the primal dawn
 When old Deucalion on the unpeopled earth
 Cast stones, whence men, a flinty race, were reared.
 Up then! if fat the soil, let sturdy bulls
 Upturn it from the year's first opening months,
 And let the clods lie bare till baked to dust
 By the ripe suns of summer; but if the earth
 Less fruitful just ere Arcturus rise
 With shallower trench uptilt it- 'twill suffice;
 There, lest weeds choke the crop's luxuriance, here,
 Lest the scant moisture fail the barren sand.
 Then thou shalt suffer in alternate years
 The new-reaped fields to rest, and on the plain
 A crust of sloth to harden; or, when stars
 Are changed in heaven, there sow the golden grain
 Where erst, luxuriant with its quivering pod,
 Pulse, or the slender vetch-crop, thou hast cleared,
 And lupin sour, whose brittle stalks arise,
 A hurtling forest. For the plain is parched
 By flax-crop, parched by oats, by poppies parched
 In Lethe-slumber drenched. Nathless by change
 The travailing earth is lightened, but stint not
 With refuse rich to soak the thirsty soil,
 And shower foul ashes o'er the exhausted fields.
 Thus by rotati