The Georgics [English] | Page 5

of leaves abound,?Vainly your threshing-floor will bruise the stalks?Rich but in chaff. Many myself have seen?Steep, as they sow, their pulse-seeds, drenching them?With nitre and black oil-lees, that the fruit?Might swell within the treacherous pods, and they?Make speed to boil at howso small a fire.?Yet, culled with caution, proved with patient toil,?These have I seen degenerate, did not man?Put forth his hand with power, and year by year?Choose out the largest. So, by fate impelled,?Speed all things to the worse, and backward borne?Glide from us; even as who with struggling oars?Up stream scarce pulls a shallop, if he chance?His arms to slacken, lo! with headlong force?The current sweeps him down the hurrying tide.?Us too behoves Arcturus' sign observe,?And the Kids' seasons and the shining Snake,?No less than those who o'er the windy main?Borne homeward tempt the Pontic, and the jaws?Of oyster-rife Abydos. When the Scales?Now poising fair the hours of sleep and day?Give half the world to sunshine, half to shade,?Then urge your bulls, my masters; sow the plain?Even to the verge of tameless winter's showers?With barley: then, too, time it is to hide?Your flax in earth, and poppy, Ceres' joy,?Aye, more than time to bend above the plough,?While earth, yet dry, forbids not, and the clouds?Are buoyant. With the spring comes bean-sowing;?Thee, too, Lucerne, the crumbling furrows then?Receive, and millet's annual care returns,?What time the white bull with his gilded horns?Opens the year, before whose threatening front,?Routed the dog-star sinks. But if it be?For wheaten harvest and the hardy spelt,?Thou tax the soil, to corn-ears wholly given,?Let Atlas' daughters hide them in the dawn,?The Cretan star, a crown of fire, depart,?Or e'er the furrow's claim of seed thou quit,?Or haste thee to entrust the whole year's hope?To earth that would not. Many have begun?Ere Maia's star be setting; these, I trow,?Their looked-for harvest fools with empty ears.?But if the vetch and common kidney-bean?Thou'rt fain to sow, nor scorn to make thy care?Pelusiac lentil, no uncertain sign?Bootes' fall will send thee; then begin,?Pursue thy sowing till half the frosts be done.?Therefore it is the golden sun, his course?Into fixed parts dividing, rules his way?Through the twelve constellations of the world.?Five zones the heavens contain; whereof is one?Aye red with flashing sunlight, fervent aye?From fire; on either side to left and right?Are traced the utmost twain, stiff with blue ice,?And black with scowling storm-clouds, and betwixt?These and the midmost, other twain there lie,?By the Gods' grace to heart-sick mortals given,?And a path cleft between them, where might wheel?On sloping plane the system of the Signs.?And as toward Scythia and Rhipaean heights?The world mounts upward, likewise sinks it down?Toward Libya and the south, this pole of ours?Still towering high, that other, 'neath their feet,?By dark Styx frowned on, and the abysmal shades.?Here glides the huge Snake forth with sinuous coils?'Twixt the two Bears and round them river-wiseThe?Bears that fear 'neath Ocean's brim to dip.?There either, say they, reigns the eternal hush?Of night that knows no seasons, her black pall?Thick-mantling fold on fold; or thitherward?From us returning Dawn brings back the day;?And when the first breath of his panting steeds?On us the Orient flings, that hour with them?Red Vesper 'gins to trim his his 'lated fires.?Hence under doubtful skies forebode we can?The coming tempests, hence both harvest-day?And seed-time, when to smite the treacherous main?With driving oars, when launch the fair-rigged fleet,?Or in ripe hour to fell the forest-pine.?Hence, too, not idly do we watch the starsTheir?rising and their setting-and the year,?Four varying seasons to one law conformed.?If chilly showers e'er shut the farmer's door,?Much that had soon with sunshine cried for haste,?He may forestall; the ploughman batters keen?His blunted share's hard tooth, scoops from a tree?His troughs, or on the cattle stamps a brand,?Or numbers on the corn-heaps; some make sharp?The stakes and two-pronged forks, and willow-bands?Amerian for the bending vine prepare.?Now let the pliant basket plaited be?Of bramble-twigs; now set your corn to parch?Before the fire; now bruise it with the stone.?Nay even on holy days some tasks to ply?Is right and lawful: this no ban forbids,?To turn the runnel's course, fence corn-fields in,?Make springes for the birds, burn up the briars,?And plunge in wholesome stream the bleating flock.?Oft too with oil or apples plenty-cheap?The creeping ass's ribs his driver packs,?And home from town returning brings instead?A dented mill-stone or black lump of pitch.?The moon herself in various rank assigns?The days for labour lucky: fly the fifth;?Then sprang pale Orcus and the Eumenides;?Earth then in awful labour brought to light?Coeus, Iapetus, and Typhoeus fell,?And those sworn brethren banded to break down?The gates of heaven; thrice, sooth to say, they strove?Ossa on Pelion's top to heave and heap,?Aye, and on Ossa to up-roll amain?Leafy Olympus; thrice with thunderbolt?Their mountain-stair the Sire asunder smote.?Seventh after tenth is lucky both to set?The vine in earth,