$ •■■ fix** Jill THE GEOEGICS VIRGIL. BY JOHN BENSON B S E. FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION. LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STRE$J\ AND CHARING CROSS. 1865. g 205449 '13 \ THE GEORGICS. BOOK 1. TTTHAT makes rich land, 'neath what ascendant sign To plough the glebe and join the elm and vine, Maecenas, hear: — of flocks and herds I sing, Of frugal bees experience too I bring. Ye mightiest Lights that rule the passing year, 5 Father Liber, Alma Ceres, hear! If thro' your gifts the teeming earth doth yield For glands Chaonian the corn-waying field, If by your gift the Acheloian draught, Is tempered in the cup by mortals quaffed; 10 Hither, hither, Fauns and Dryads come, 1 sing your gifts, gods of the rustic home; And Neptune thou, who from the cloven earth With trident stroke didst give the courser birth ; B 2 THE GEOEGICS. Book I. Thou, denizen of groves, — in Caean shades 15 Three hundred snowy oxen crop thy glades ; Thou Tegeaean Pan — protecting flocks, O quit thy country, quit Lycaean rocks, Quit Maenalus, and come propitious here ; Minerva, giver of the Olive, hear! 20 And thou, inventor of the crooked plough; Sylvane, with uprooted cypress thou : Ye gods and goddesses of grove and glade, Who guard the seed and tend the tender blade From Heaven dispensing genial sun and shade ; — 25 And thou, most of all, whose future fate The gods in council now deliberate, O Caesar whether provinces or towns Shall be thy care, in thee the votary owns, Binding maternal myrtle on his brow, 30 The god of seasons and of fruits below: The god of ocean wouldst thou choose to be, The mariner shall only worship thee, And utmost Thule, and glad Tethys own And buy with all her waves thee for her son: 35 Or wouldst thou add thy planet to the Zone, Between Erigone and Chelae, one Book I. THE GEOKGICS. 3 Space vacant lies, — Scorpio contracts his claws And Heaven itself an ampler space accords: Whate'er thou be, — for let not Tartarus 40 To thee aspire, be that far from us, Tho' Greece admire those fields Elysian, And tho' Proserpina doth there remain, Nor cares to follow Ceres back again : Whate'er thou be, thy favoring aid I ask, 45 Bow down a gracious ear upon my task; Pity I pray, the struggling husbandman, And use thyself to hear the vows of man. In early spring, when from the mountain snow The streams descend and blander zephyrs blow 50 And tame the glebe, — yoke, yoke anew the steer, And furbish with fresh work the rusted share. That corn-land best repays the farmer's pains That twice the sun and twice the frost sustains, The barn-floor groans beneath its gathered grains. 55 But ere thou break the glebe-land to the plough, Behoves it well the tide and time to know, Behoves to know the climate and the soil, And what will pay and what will mock the toil ; B 2 4 THE GEORGICS. Book I. Here corn will flourish, there the grape will grow, 60 Here acorn glands, unbidden grass below ; Dost thou not see how Tmolus doth supply Its croceate odours, India, ivory, How naked Chalybes their iron yield, And frankincense the soft Sabsean field, 65 Pontus the medicated Castor slays, Epirus mares breeds for Eleian bays? For Nature first imposed her constant laws, And to each spot assigned a local cause, Since first Deucalion, in the vacant space 70 Cast stones to renovate the human race : A hardy race, up therefore with the year And yoke the lusty bulls and urge the share, Plough the stiff lands and let the solar ray There penetrate, and triturate the clay : 75 If poor the soil, or light, the task delay, Beneath Arcturus lightly wound the lay, So shall the first o'er weeds the mastery gain, The last its kindlier moisture shall retain. The harvest o'er, in fallow leave the soil, 80 Nor cast away on wasted land thy toil ; Book I. THE GEOKGICS. 5 Crop with alternate seeds of pulse and grain. Let pods leguminous wave o'er the plain, Vetches, or lupins, with their stems untrue; Flax starves the soil, oat crops consume it too, 85 And poppies steep it in Lethgean dew. Yet may you with such alternate the grain, If by manuring you repair the drain, And farmyard muck with lavish hand bestow, And sordid ashes liberally throw, 90 Then crops alternate may reward your pains, And fallows saved, the land gives annual gains. And oft it profits well to fire the land, And burn the weeds and stubble as they stand ; Whether some dormant virtue be revealed, 95 Or damps and harmful vapours be expelled, Whether it cleave tenacious depths of earth And give imprisoned elements new birth, Or with astringent power close it fast 'Gainst heats solstitial and the borean blast. 100 And who with harrows breaks the inert clod, Or with the crate of hurdle brushes sod, On him, from high Olympus, Ceres smiles : Or who the soil's tenacity beguiles THE GEOEGICS. Book I. With ploughings frequent, and who levels low 105 The furrows, with oblique and upturned plough. And ask, Ye husbandmen! the Gods on high For humid summers and for winters dry, For wintry dust doth make a joyful field, And so it is, that Mysia's harvests yield no And Gargarus their grain-crops unexcelled. What shall I say of him who sows the land, And spreads without delay the crumbling sand, And leads the irrigating waters there, And when the droughty field is grey and bare 115 Who opes the sluices, and the waters flow With murmuring freshness pebbly channels thro', Feeding the plain beneath its verdant bank. Or what of him, who when the herb grows rank Crops off its free luxuriance ere it rise; 120 Or drains the marsh the sand to fertilize ; Or when abounding rivers rise, of him, Who leads o'er plains the tributary stream; When the ditch reeks with miasmatic steam. And now to mar the labours of the year 125 Strymonian cranes and villain geese appear, BookI. THE GEORGICS. 7 And bitter weeds, and overhanging shade Inimical unto the rising blade. For He, the Sire, ordained it so to be, Nor willed Earth's harvests to be garner'd free, 130 He chaseth sluggardness forth from his reign, And chasteneth the human heart with pain: He, the black serpent fang envenomed, made,' 'Twas He who bad the midnight wolf to raid, Forbad the oak its honey to distil, 135 And founts of wine repressed in every rill ; He troubled Ocean, hid the spark of fire, So made the human intellect inquire And gather from the furrow seeds of wheat, And strike forth from the flint its latent heat, 140 And launch the hollowed trunk upon the wave ; Then stars were numbered, and the seamen gave Names to the constellations, Arcton bright And Hyades and Pleiades were hight : — Then lime and toils for bird and beast were set, 145 The glade beleaguered was with dog and net, The cast-net smote the river, and the sein Quitting the land took tribute of the main, THE GEOKGICS. Book I. 150 loo Then iron steeled the axe and serried saw, (For the wedge only cleft the tree before) Whence various arts, hard labour conquered all, And urgent poverty supplied the call. 'Twas Ceres first taught man to sow the seed, When sacred groves failed to supply his need, When first Dodona glands and fruits denied, And toil and labour better fruits supplied. Then thistles choked the cultivated field, And the wheat-stalk by mildew was assailed, The corn-plant fell, and rising in its stead, Burdock and cockle the fair field invade, Wild oats and darnel with malignant shade : Unless you urge the harrow and the share, Scare off the birds, and prune the hedges near, With vows invoke the beneficial rain, Altho' full crops reward your neighbour's pain, Go, shake the forest oaks, for mast instead of grain. Xow to describe each rustic implement, To sow the seed, and store the harvest sent; The ponderous and crooked plough, the share, The wain, the Eleusinian matron's care, 170 160 165 Book I. THE GEORGICS. 9 The tribulum, the harrow, and the sledge, The wicker pannier, hurdle from the hedge, And mystic Vannus of Iacchus: — Ye who list To gain the name of Agriculturist, Must needs have these and more, to gather grist. 175 And for thy plough, bend down the growing plant, And force it to the angle that you want, Eight feet of draught-beam furnished with two ears, And sockets of reduplicated shares; The ploughtail chesnut, linden be the yoke 180 Well seasoned from thy hearth by heat and smoke : More precepts, old and manifold, there are, But the trite subject warns me to forbear. Thy threshing-floor by heavy roller pressed, Must with the hand and concrete clay be drest, 185 Lest weeds should spring unbidden, and the ground Yawn and produce the plagues which then abound; The tiny mouse beneath the garner'd floor Will scoop his domicile and hoard his store, There the blind mole will dig his resting-place, 190 The toad his haunt, the weevil leave its trace, And emmets lodge their frugal prescient race. 10 THE GEOKGICS. Book I. Go, mark the groves too at the budding year, If on the almond leaves or bloom appear ; If bloom predominate the foliage o'er 195 It bodes hot summer and abundant store, But from luxuriance of leaf, infer Small heaps of grain from overgrowth of straw. Some husbandmen will medicate their grain, In nitre steep, with black amurca stain, 200 So doth the germinating principle Take readier root, a lesser heat will swell, And lesser moisture nurture it as well. Yet have I seen and known the fairest grain, Culled with all care, degenerate again; 205 Fate so ordains, that all should downwards tend, All retrograde, all in confusion end : JSTot, not unlike the boatman, that doth row The ceaseless stream against, which takes his prow, And one unguarded moment hath him lost 210 The toil and labour of an hour's cost. For us, the constellations of the skies, Arcturus, Draco, and the Kids arise, For us, as for the wearied mariner Who home returning doth his scallop steer 215 Through jaws of Helle, from the Euxine drear. Book I. THE GEOEGICS. 11 And when the Sun in Libra parts the day, Up boys, and yoke the oxen and away! Up now, and sow the barley o'er the plain Till autumn stop thee, deluging with rain; 220 Sow now the flax, the cereal poppy sow, And whilst the season suffers, speed the plough: Beans in the spring, trefoil and millet spare Till Taurus golden-horned doth ope the year, And Sirius yields unto his adverse star. 225 But if on farinaceous crops you trust, And the fat soil bear harvests so robust, When the Atlantides to Ocean wend, And Ariadne's Grnossian stars descend, Then, not till then, commit the nobler seed, 230 Hope of thy profit, mainstay of thy need : Some or ere Maia couches need begin, But loads of straw with empty husks they win, If tares or simple vetches, humble grain! Nor lentils of Pelusium you disdain, 235 Bootes setting, bids thee to begin, And sow away till winter's frosts set in. And therefore 'tis, the glorious solar path Its twelve distinctive constellations hath : 12 THE GEOBGICS. Book I. Five Zones too bound the Orb, the centre one 240 Scorched by the blazing sun, the Torrid Zone ; Two Frigid to the right and left are lost Closed up with storm, caerulean ice and frost : The intermediate twain, the Gods concede To mortal man, tempered to human need : 245 Touching on both of these, the annual sun With course oblique its Zodiac doth run, To Scythia and Eiphsean Mounts ascends, And downwards in its turn to Lybia tends : One Pole sublime is ever in our sight, 250 The other Styx beholds, the Manes and dark night. Here, Draco, like a mighty river, holds The topmost place, the Arctoi in his folds, The Arctoi that avoid the bounding main; There, so they say, Night holds eternal reign 255 In silence and impenetrable shade, — Or else Aurora, rosy-fingered maid, From thence doth lead the dawn, when Phoebus bright Eeins in the East the snorting steeds of light, Whilst Hesperus below doth usher in the night. 260 And hence it is the Heavens do foreshow The seasons of the harvest and the plough, Book I. THE GEORGICS. What time to launch upon the faithless main, What time to shelter the armed fleet again, What time to level low the mighty pine. 265 Such use for us hath each revolving sign, The seasons four have each their harbinger, And man by them anticipates the year. When winter's storms shut labourers at home, Prepare for spring-tide and the work to come ; 270 Point blunted shares, measure and score thy stock, And hollow out thy skiff, and mark thy flock, Sharpen the forks and stakes, and for the vines Lay in a stock of Amerinan bines ; Now cull and weave thy osiers one by one, 275 And roast thy grain and grind it on the stone. Some works there be, nor right nor codes gainsay As just and lawful on a festal day ; Keligion none forbids the stream to flow, To bar the ripened harvest from its foe, 280 To snare the bird, to fire the noxious brake, To plunge the panting bleaters in the lake, Oft doth the villager with patient toil Visit the city with his fruits and oil, 14 THE GEOKGICS. Book I. At eve returning with a weighty mass, 285 Millstone, or pitch upon the tardy ass. The Moon herself doth changing indicate Auspicious days, and those opposed by Fate: The fifth avoid — Orcus was born thereon, And the Eunienides, — Terra her brood, anon, 290 Casus, Iapetus, Typhosus rude, Produced and being gave, with hate to Heaven endued. Thrice did those dread conspirators essay Ossa on Pelion, and that mass to lay Wooded Olympus on: and three times did the Sire 295 Cast down the heap with Heaven's resistless fire. The seventeenth is good, then oxen tame, Plant vineyards, place the web upon the frame ; The ninth brings wayworn travellers relief, But bodes no end of mischief to the thief. 300 Some works there be that best affect the night, Or dewy morn beneath Eous bright: Then gather stalks and stems, then mow the mead, The dews nocturnal aid such arduous deed: By winter's firelight the labourer 305 Kends torches from the trunk of unctuous fir, BookI. THE GEOEGICS. 15 The whilst his partner bending o'er the loom With song and gladness cheers the nuptial home, Or skims with verdant bough the brazen pan, Where Vulcan tempers Bacchant draughts for man. 310 But ruddy Ceres is in summer reaped, The threshing-floor in summer-tide is heaped, Then plough and sow, the winter thee defies. Distribute then, as far as in thee lies, And glad the labouring rustic with thy store, 315 Open to mirth thine hospitable door, As when the weather-beaten barks return, And enter port with garlands on each stern. With acorn-glands then fill thy garners full, And laurel, olive, myrtle-berries cull ; 320 Set snares for cranes, and chase the timid hare, And plant the nets and toils to catch the deer, And when the winter bringeth frost and snow, With Balearic sling smite down the doe. Of autumn's storms, and stars autumnal now, 325 On shorter days when milder breezes blow, The work which then behoves to do, I sing : What work beside in watery clouded spring, 16 THE GEOKGICS. Book I. And what when milky fruit outbursts the sheath : Often have I, the summer solstice 'neath, 330 What time the rustic reaper seeks the plain, And wheat and barley bend with yellow grain, Oft have I seen the Sons of Air at war, The heavy ears uprooted hurled afar, Tossed wracked and twisted in the whirlwinds round ; 335 And often then a deluge sweeps the ground, Black clouds with fetid tempest gather o'er, Down on devoted lands the torrents pour Sweeping the gathered harvests as they flow, And filling hollowed river-beds below 340 Kaging and roaring as down down they go. And He, the Sire, shrouded in night of cloud, Midst coruscating lightning thunders loud, Earth trembles and beasts flee, and mortals stand In awe and doubt of the immortal hand ; 345 He casts the flaming bolt, behold it smite E-hodope, Athos, or Ceraunia's height; The sons of Auster rave midst fog and rain, And now the groves and now the shores complain. Of stars and skies then mark the time and tide, 350 Where the coid star of Saturn doth abide, And where Cyllenius hot on high doth ride. BookI. THE GEORGICS. 17 But first and chiefly, venerate the Gods. Make thee a rustic altar, built of sods, Offer and pay thereon thine annual vows 355 To Ceres, soon as spring serene allows : Then the fat lambs and then the sweetest wines, And sweet repose beneath the mountain-pines. Pay unto Ceres, rustics, rites divine, With milk and honey and libated wine : 360 Thrice round the corn-field let the victim wend, And choirs of youths and maidens him attend, Invoking Ceres, as the rustic's friend: Nor put a sickle to the harvest-ground, Or ere with brows with oaken garland crowned, 365 The dance and chant of praise to Ceres doth resound. And that we may by certain signals learn, And heat and cold and every wind discern, The Sire committed to the moon to show What it befits the husbandman to know, 370 When Auster lulls, and when to stall the herd. By sure presage the rising storm is heard, The agitated sea begins to swell, The murmur of the mountain doth foretell, 18 THE GEORGICS. Book I, Answering afar to the resounding shore, 375 Joining and mingling with the forests' roar. Let barks beware, when sea-fowl quit the main, And the light sea-mew fears its native plain, When herons quit the marsh, and wing their flight Midst clouds of Heaven away from mortal sight. 380 Oft, too, before a storm the stars of night Shoot through the sky athwart, their trail of light, Then straws and leaves will volitate in air, And feathers scud upon the waters clear: Then when rude Boreas lightens at the pole, 385 And Zephyrus and Eurus thundering roll, Look to see flooded ditches, flooded fields, And mariners upfurl their soaking sails: Never unheralded do storms appear, The noisy cranes proclaim them in the air, 390 With head aloft the heifer scents the gales, Around and round the lake the swallow sails, Frogs querulous renew their ancient tales, The busy ant along its narrow roads Carries its eggs to more secure abodes, 395 The mighty Bow then drinks, — and filled with food The cawing rooks seek shelter of the wood, Book I. THE GEOKGICS. 19 The birds marine and those of Asian plain Where levels broad Cayster's waves restrain, Dive, dip, and frolic in their native wave, 400 Studious it seemeth then themselves to lave, The hoarse resounding partridge proclaims rain, And sits apart upon the arid plain, The damsels, plying in lamp-lighted room Their evening tasks with distaff and with loom, 405 Will predicate from the explosive spark, Or fungus on the wick, there formed of carbon dark. Like heralded appear the days serene, When Sol bursts forth again in golden sheen ; The Moon almost disclaims fraternal light, 410 Bright stars and fleecy cloud bedeck the lap of night, Halcyones, beloved of Thetis, roam With outspread pinions o'er their watery home, The sow unclean lies on the littered straw, Nor roots or tosses up the litter more, 415 The mists descend and hang the hills among, The screech-owl sits and stills his noisy tongue The sunset watching from the turret's height ; Nisus, in air aloft, pursues his flight, c 2 20 THE GEORGICS. Book I. And chases Scylla for the purple hair; 420 She flees and wings her silent flight thro' air, And hears with palpitating flutterings The retribution on his strident wings. Three times and four times then, with open throat From their high nests the rooks prolong a note, 425 Gladness, methinks the cause, gladness to see Their homesteads safe and safe their progeny, The storm-blast overpast and safe the shady tree. Not that, in sooth, I think a soul divine Prompts the instinctive and unerring sign 430 Teaching such creatures to foretell the day, Material organs enter into play, They sink when Jupiter sends Auster here, They rise beneath the rising atmosphere, Then fields and groves resound the song of birds, 435 And rooks rejoicing, and the blatant herds. And mark the rapid Sun in daily flight, And mark the changing Moon that rules the night ; And never will their portents thee deceive, Despite the wiles insidious of the eve : 440 In the new waxing moon if clouds profane And pale her crescent bow, it bodes for rain, BookI. TPIE GEORGICS. 21 But if a virgin blush her face o'erspread, It will be storm, for storms make Phoebe red. If four days old, this signal is most sure, 445 Her silvery horns be clear, her light be pure, The days that unto the next moon remain Will pass securely without wind or rain ; Then grateful mariners upon the shore, To Glaucus, and to Panopea, pour, 450 And Melicerta to, their offerings vowed before. The Orient Sun and Couchant in the wave Their signs infallible and portents have, Aurora what, what stars of evening bring. If spots pollute his disc at sunrising, 455 Or if the misty cloud his orb obscure, Prepare for tempest; Notus so/n will pour From Ocean on devoted flocks on shore. And if Aurora quitting Tithon's bed Be very pale, and if the rays o'erhead 460 Break in directions many through the cloud, The tendrils of the vine will poorly shroud The ripened grape from the descending hail, 'Gainst whose assault the cottage-roof may fail. 22 THE GEOEGICS. Book I. Remember too the colours that arise 465 And cross upon bis front as Phoebus dies, Caerulean, Rain, — the rubric, Eurus bring, And both at once betide the gathering And bursting upon earth of Wind and Rain : Forfend it, Fate, that I be on the main! 470 On such a night keep mariners on shore : But morn returning, if his light be pure, Then cease to fear or clouds or stormy seas, And Aquilon will ride upon the breeze. Last sign of all, doth Hesperus foreshow 475 The night serene when fairest breezes blow, And those when Auster watereth earth below ; The Sim foretells, and who will dare gainsay The Sun, that drags conspirators to day, Opposing secret plots and anarchy alway? 480 Say did not he, when Caesar fell in Rome, Obscure his glorious head in deepest gloom, That man believed the reign of Night had come ? Did not the Earth and Seas foretell his fate, And dogs obscene and birds importunate? 485 Say, did not iEtna burst and torrents pour. Stone liquified, Cyclopian regions o'er ? BookL THE GEORGJLCK. 23 Germania heard in air the clash of arms, The Alpine summits quivered with alarms, In holy groves a Voice the silence broke, 490 Pale sullen ghosts their sepulchres forsook, And cattle, sign unholy, cattle spoke ; Streams stood on heaps, Earth yawned, her fanes were wet With weeping ivory and brazen sweat;— Eridanus, the king of mighty floods, 495 With rage insane invaded fields and woods, And swept away the homestead and the herd ; In holy entrails Heaven's wrath appeared, The fountains issued blood, the Forum rung With midnight wolves that raided man among, 500 Never before so blazed the sky serene, And ne'er before such comets dread were seen. And truly was it then, Philippi saw The Koman legions met in mutual war, The Gods permitted Koman blood to stain 505 The mounts of Haemus and Emathian plain ; The day will come, when on those hostile bounds The labourer will calmly till the grounds, The share upturn the pilum red with rust, The harrow roll the helmet filled with dust, 510 24 THE GEOKGICS. Book 1. Or strike upon trie hidden sepulchre And give to sight the big bones buried there. Gods of my country, Gods indigenous, Thou, Mother Vesta, —Father Komulus, — Guardians of Tuscan Tiber and of Home, 515 Prohibit not, unto our suffering home, The guardianship of him, our princely boy ; Enough, enough Laomedontian Troy Hath expiated perjury with blood; But Heaven, Caesar ! claims her rights withstood, 520 And plains that here you militate so long- In a sad world to which all ills belong Midst wars and factions, right confused with wrong; The plough unhonoured stands, its sometime Lord Converts the crooked sickle to a sword; 525 Euphrates here, Germania there doth rise, And neighbouring cities faith and law despise; — Mars, savage Mars, doth ravage the whole world. — Aye, like to a quadriga madly whirled, When fiery coursers heed nor bit nor rein 530 Jsor voice of charioteer them seeking to restrain. Book II. THE GEORGICS. 25 BOOK II. HO far of tillage, and celestial signs Pertaining thereunto, now Bacchus prompt my lines ; For I must sing of vineyards unto thee, And of the tardy growing olive-tree: Father Lenseus, how thy gifts surround, 5 How the autumnal vintage ripens round — In flowing vats, how doth new wine abound. Father Lenseus come, from buskins free, "With naked thighs, tread out the grapes with me. Nature diversely prompts the growth of trees, 10 Some rise spontaneously upon her leas, Some haunt the winding stream, the champaign some, The tribe of osiers and the wavy broom, The poplar, and green willow's hoary leaf: Some rise from seed deposited, — the chief 15 The chesnut, and the iEsculus of Jove, And oak oracular of Grecian grove : 26 THE GEORGIC'S. Book II. Some thrust their suckers where thick shade overwhelms, So propagate the cherry tribe and elms, So doth the young Parnassian laurel grow 20' Her mighty mother's fostering shade below: Such the priniseval laws that Nature gave, And orchards, woods, and groves in common have. But man's experience teaches other ways, When tender scions in the sod he lays, 25 Or buries parent trunks, or rends in twain Or thrusts the sharpened branches in the plain, Bends and lays suckers in the soil below, Or cuts and plants afresh a topmost bough. The olive-bark (how marvellous) will shoot, 30 The dried up bark can form itself a root: Engrafted stocks their foster fruit will bear, The ruddy apple growing on the pear, And stony hawthorns ruby plums can rear: Up therefore husbandmen and learn your craft, 35 Amend the savage stock with better graft ; Let no lands idle lie, — for Ismara loves The Bacchant vine, Taburnus olive groves. And thou Maecenas, wilt thou as of yore Loose once again our scallop from the shore, 40 Book II. THE GEORGICS. 27 Spread its free sail, our object still the same, Thou source and worthy fountain of my fame : But ah ! a hundred tongues and iron throat Would compass not the objects of our note; Come then, and let us sail along the shore, 45 And cull our simple song, without preamble more. The forest-trees self-planted that appear Tho' sterile are magnificent and fair, — Children of fostering Nature : — Yet if thou Engraft and plant them fresh, they will forego 50 Their rugged nature, and repay thy care By bearing fruits, such as adapted are ; Nor cast away the suckers of the root, Plant them apart in ranks with room to shoot, There give them leave to bear, with leave to grow, 55 A power they lacked their mother's shade below. Tardy and slow the growth of seed-sown trees, Yet plant their shade for grandsons if you please ; But fruit degenerates, — its flavour lost, The turpid grapes are left to birds or frost ; 60 Labour is indispensable, and toil To work the stocks and suit them to the soil. 28 THE GEOEGICS. Book II. But olives best from parent stems are struck, Vines propagated are from antique stock, And Paphian myrtle from wood hard as oak. 65 From plants arise the ash and hazel-trees And poplar, yielding crowns for Hercules, Also the oak Chaonian of his Sire; So doth the soaring palm, the mighty fir, Predestined to the sea and mariner: 70 And filberts graft upon the wild arbute ; And sterile plane trees bend with rosy fruit; The chesnut and the mountain-ash will rear Their whitened crests with blossoms of the pear, And sows may munch the glands engrafted elms may bear. 75 Nor simple is the task to graft or bud; Choose a good eye, and stript from native wood, Slit and detach the sappy bark, and bind The alien bud within the foster rind: And for thy graft choose, free from knots, a limb 80 And cleave it to the centre of its stem, Insert and wedge therein the scion good; Soon will new leaves spring on the parent wood, The trunk will mark its foliage unknown, And marvel at the apples not its own. 85 Book II. THE GEORGICS. 29 And species differ also in themselves ; The willow tribe, the lotus, mighty elms, And cypresses Idsean; olives dun Fruits differing in form and worth put on, Eound, oblong, bitter berried Pausian ; 9( > So too the pears of groves Alcinoan, Crustuman, Voleman and Syrian. Nor are the grapes that hang upon our boughs Like Methymnsean grapes which Lesbos grows ; Thasian, and Mareotidan are white, 95 These love a heavy soil and those a light, Psythian good for conserve, Lageos fit To bind the foot and tongue and loose the wit : Purple and golden hued : and altho' fain, How shall I speak the praise of Ehetian, 100 Unequal yet to vats Falernian ? Sound is the juice of Amminean vine, And sound the Tmolan and Phansean wine, And fruitful are the vines that Argos bears More gushing juice enduring longer years, 105 Bumastan grapes let me not pass by, And Khodian grateful unto Gods on high ; 30 THE GEOEGICS. Book II. But every species and their names to tell, Or e'en to number them, you may as well Go count the sands upon the Lybian shore, 110 Or number every billow that doth roar On the Ionian Sea whilst Eurus hovereth o'er. Nor will all soils bear every sort of tree; Willows by brooks, alders in marshes see, The sterile ash the mountain-top approves, 115 The myrtle the delicious sea-shore loves, Bacchus, the free and open hill doth hold, And the yew thrives with Aquilon and cold. View the wide world and races maint of man From picted G-elon to Arabian, 120 How every clime hath its especial tree : India alone hath sable ebony, Sabseans only frankincense possess ; One from its odorous plant doth balsam press, One berries of acanthus ever green, 125 Groves Ethiopian white with wool are seen, And Seres, whence they cull the silken sheen. Or of those mightier groves of India Where giant monsters tower in the air, Book II. THE GEORGICS. 31 Soaring above the arrow's highest flight, 130 Albeit Indians with the bow are wyght. And Media hath a tree of acrid juice Unfavoured in its flavour, not its use, — For when the step-dame doth with charm infuse And words unholy, magic drugs she brews, 135 Poison and magic doth it neutralize, — Like to a laurel 'tis in form and size, And an' it were not for its deep perfume A laurel it would seem in leaf and gloom, Strong in its leaf, the blossom buds beneath; 140 It sweetens and it fortifies man's breath. But neither Median groves, — rich tho' they are, Nor Ganges self, comparison can bear, Nor Hernius turbid with his golden sand, Italia with, — our own best native land : 145 Nor Bactrianan lands, nor Indian, Nor incense-bearing sands Panchaian : No fire bulls,— or Hydra seed is here, No crops of mailed and helmed men appear, But golden harvests, juice of Massicus, 150 Olives and herds and flocks abound for us : 32 THE GEOEGICS. . Book II. The warlike steed breathes his defiant sound, Clitnmnns rears his milk-white herd around, Bathed in whose holy stream, the fairest beast Is culled the victim for the sacred feast 155 On Roman holy and triumphant days ; In spring perpetual, balmy Zephyr plays, Twice do our flocks produce and twice we strip our trees ; Lions and rabid tigers are unknown, The root of aconite deceiveth none, 160 Nor horrible the serpents we behold Wending their crooked way or couched in spiral fold. And add to these our cities, — citadels Pight upon rocks escarped, and antique walls 'Neath which so many noble rivers flow ; 165 And add our double seas, above, below; Lakes, — Larus Maximus, Benacus proud, The Lucrine port, which moles from Ocean shroud, Or Julian, where the Tuscan wave invades The bounds Avernan, and its sacred shades; 170 And our rich mines of silver and of brass, And gold thence gathered in its solid mass: And races stern of man, the Marsian, Sabellan youth, and strong Ligurian, Book II. THE GEORGICS. 33 And Volscian javelined ; — from hence arose 175 The Decii, Marii, the Scipios The great Marcelli, and Caesar, thou — Who on the verge of Asia even now Dost chase from Roman bounds the Indian foe : Hail ! and all hail ! thou land Saturnian, 180 Thou mighty parent both of fruits and man; Fain would my song applaud the Arts divine, Now for long years pre-eminently thine; Fain would my foot reseek the sacred spring And in Ascrsean strains to Roman people sing. 185 Now for the local genius of the fields, Strength, colour, all that boundless Nature yields ; First, the rough ground malignant hills among Where the thin clay with rock and scrub is hung, There the Palladian olive plant will grow ; 190 The oleaster native there doth show The spot by scattered berries strewed below. But where the soil is rich and moist the ground Thick grasses and fertility abound, Such as the detritus that valleys fills 195 Deposited by rivers from the hills; D 34 THE GEORGICS. Book II. And also on the pleasant southern brow, That feeds the fern detested by the plongh, With strength exuberant, there vines will grow The Bacchant grape, whence rich libations flow. 200 Such as from golden paterae we pour, When the fat Tyrrhene sounds the fanes before, And entrail fumes from bending chargers soar. But if it please thee flocks and herds to rear, Or if the browzing goat should be thy care, 205 Seek you the glades Tarentum of afar ; Or the lost fields of hapless Mantua, Where graceful swans upon the floods abound, And springs perennial feed the verdure round, Where all the herd consumes on longest days 210 The gelid dew of shortest nights repays. If black the soil or greasy, where the share Hath cleft the furrow, if the surface there Be crumbled mould, and ploughing makes it so, There sow the Cereal crop, the oxen slow 215 Shall drag a groaning wain as homeward bent they go. And where the indignant husbandman with axe The unproductive scrub or wood attacks, Book II. THE GEOKGICS. 35 Grubs up its roots, and from their ancient home Sends exiled forth the feathered tribes to roam, 220 Where glisten from the share flat clods of loam. And for the hot and hungry gravel lea, Which scarcely grows wild thyme to feast the bee, Rough tophus rock — chalk hollowed by the snake Such lands grow poisons in their rugged brake, 225 The serpent tribe feed there, and habitations make. And where the morning mist doth lightly lie, Which drinks at eve, and at noonday is dry, Lands which are vestured in eternal green No rusting salt, — or hurtling rock there seen, 230 There plant the elm and twine the joyful vine ; Plant olives, — sow with grain, or flocks assign, Such land is good for all, corn, oil and wine : Such land hath Capua, — Vesuvius such, And Clanius with its floods, troubling Acerrse much. 235 And now to tell thee how the land to prove, And whether light or heavy it will move, For Ceres loves the heavy, Bacchus light : First choose a likely spot judged by the sight And dig a deep pit in unbroken soil, 240 Then shovel back the earth and tread and moil, d 2 36 THE GEOEGICS. Book II. If insufficient to refill the pit, 'Tis light, for pasturage or vineyard fit ; But if the heavy clods redundant are 'Tis Cereal soil and fitter for the share, 245 Gro yoke thy strongest team and speed it there. Salt spots there be, and many a bitter plot Hostile to fruits, — the plough amends such not; There vines change kind and apples lose their name, Behold the method how to prove the same ; 250 Take from thy smoky roof the colander Which since it strained the grape hangs idly there, Put earth therein and waters pure to pass To grapple with and percolate its mass, The saturated drop to taste betrays, 255 And man's long face the nausea bewrays. Lastly, if land be rich, we prove it so The more we knead, the denser will it grow Adhesive like to pitch and dump as dough. Moist lands grow freely, oft too freely grow, 260 Far be from mine such vigour, lest it show In rank luxuriance of empty straw : Upon the weight of land I say no more Heavy and light self-manifested are : Book II. THE GEORGICS. 37 Colour the same, is to the eyesight clear ; 265 Not so the native cold oft latent there, Shown by the firs and noxious yews thereon, And by the black and spreading ivy known. Forewarned by these, to meliorate the land Heaped up in furrows let the masses stand, 270 That Aquilon may pulverize the clod, Or 'ere you subject vine-plants to the sod : Soil pulverized is best, plough deep and trust The winds and frosts to aid the arm robust. Some husbandmen affect extremer care, 275 And plant and transplant on sites similar, And lest the orphaned plant its mother rue, Remove to soil like that wherein it grew ; Some score the bark towards the mid-clay sun, Replanting that its rays may fall thereon ; 280 Such force hath custom tender plants upon. And ere you plant your vines consider well The properties of valley, hill, and dell : If the field fertile be, plant thick and close, And Bacchus undefrauded will not lose ; 285 Quadrate in rows upon a sudden rise, But careful be each space to equalize, 38 THE GEOBGICS. Book II. In ranks symmetrical thy plants dispose; As in the battle-field the legion throws Its cohorts widely stationed o'er the plain, 290 Where war in its magnificence doth reign, Or ere they knell the onset with alarms, And Mars uncertain stalks betwixt contending arms. Nor deem such order merely meant to please The vacant eye of luxury and ease, 295 But to allot each plant its equal share Of mother earth and vivifying air. What depth to delve the soil dost thou divine ? A simple furrow will suffice the vine, But delve far deeper for the forest-tree; 300 The iEsculus in chief — for deeply he, High as in air above his branches shoot, Strikes to the depths of Tartarus his root ; And therefore 'tis the winter blasts and rain, Accumulating years, assault in vain ; 305 Man's generations, ages pass away, Still sturdily the forest-lord stands he In his own shade and self-dependency. Face not thy vineyard to the setting sun, Nor mingle hazel-nuts the vines among ; 310 Book II. THE GEORGICS. 39 Cut scions near the root, such love they feel For Mother Earth, nor rasp with blunted steel, Plant not the vines sylvestrian olives near, For oft the careless shepherd folding there Doth fire all unawares the unctuous bark, 315 A little while, flames kindle from the spark Eavage and raid below with tumult loud And Heaven itself assail with pitchy cloud ; And should it happen that the north wind rage, Kedoubled strife doth fire and tempest wage, 320 All perish then, incurable the wound, Charred roots and desolation lie around, Till the wild olive reassumes its ground. Let no persuasion move to plough or sow The rigid earth whilst Boreas rude cloth blow, 325 Cast not away together seed and toil On frozen and impenetrable soil ; Best season for such task, the rosy spring, When the white birds, destroying snakes, take wing ; The next when hoar-frost summer heats succeeds, 330 And Sol begins to curb his rampant steeds. O springtide sweet, when trees resume their sheen, springtide sweet, when earth again is green, 40 THE GEOEGICS. Book II. When Jove descends in showers to repose Upon the lap of Earth his happy spouse; 335 The Sire Etherial and the Mother Earth Commingling to produce the springtide's birth: Love reigns below, bewrayed in songs of birds, And gambollings of wanton flocks and herds ; Love rules the fruitful field, by Zephyr pressed, 340 She opes to him the secret of her breast ; Dews shed fertility, and herbs abound Beneath the newborn Sun they blossom round ; The Bacchant vine, her summer garb puts on, Nor longer dreads Auster or Aquilon. 345 E'en such methinks was that primaeval tide, Or ere the days to seasons were allied, 'Twas ever Spring, and Spring o'er all the world : No wintry blasts were then by Eurus hurled; When, Iron progeny of flinty ground, 350 Man, head erect, first cast his gaze around; When cattle filled the field, and beasts the grove, And the stars garnished the fair vault above; For early Nature needed such an hour For the infirm and unestablished power, 355 Unequal yet to bear her sun and shower. Book II. THE GEORGICS. 41 But to return, where'er you plant the vine Cast in manure, and heap around the bine, And bury porous stone, and shells marine, And let the waters percolate between 360 Imparting air and vigour to the roots: And some there be protect the scion shoots With stone and broken pottery, to shield, Should rain immoderate o'erflood the field, Or sultry Sirius need to be repelled. 365 And round the sets still reinstate the soil, And work it well with hoes, and spare no toil, Subject each alley to the cleansing share, And lunge the stalwart oxen here and there; Tie the light tendrils to peeled withes and reeds, 370 And forks and ashen poles the fabric needs; Soon will they gather strength to scorn the breeze, And clamber to the summits of the trees. But whilst the plant is young forbear to prune, Let them lash out, nor use the knife too soon; 375 But pinch the prurient buds off with the hand, And when the sturdy fold and solid band Entwines the elm-tree, then away with fear, Assume the pruning-hook and do not spare, 42 THE GEOKGICS. Book II. But with tyrannic empire lop away 380 Superfluous branches and redundant spray. Weave fences well, and keep all cattle out, Especially when first the tendrils sprout, More damage oft is done, more fruit is lost By ox or nibbling goat, than heat or frost ; 385 Sheep browze and greedy heifers them consume ; Winter's hard ice inflicts not direr doom, Nor the hot ray on the unsheltered rock Than is inflicted by the raiding flock, Whose venomed tooth corrodes the wounded stock. 390 'Twas for no other fault the goat was slain To Bacchus, by all nations, at his fane, When ancient games first instituted were, Enacted by the mimes in theatre. Then the Theseidse this prize bestowed 395 At every village and at each cross-road, Whilst that the riotous and happy swain Leaped on the unctuous skin, or rolled upon the plain. And still Ausonian colonists rehearse, Deduced from Troy, the incoherent verse, 400 With faces masked they shouting pass along, Invoking Bacchus in their joyful song; Book II. THE GEORGICS. 43 His pendant image to the pine they brace, And wheresoe'er he turns his honest face, Upon the hill-side or the valley's shade, 405 It pours fertility on grove and glade : Therefore with reason we in patriot lays Invoke his Godhead and resound his praise, Therefore with reason we the chargers bear And cakes of oil and honey'd meal prepare, 410 Drag by the horn the victim to the God, And toast his entrails on the hazel-rod. Another toil besets the husbandman And tasks his energies, do what he can, Three times and four times in the year to plough 415 And pulverize with the eternal hoe: Another endless labour is to prune; The daily tasks in a full orbit run, And the year ends where erst the year begun. E'en when the last autumnal leaf is gone, 420 And sylvan beauties yield to Aquilon, The swain anticipates the future year ; With crooked falx of Saturn see him there Pruning his vines and chast'ning them to bear. Be first to dig and delve, and rubbish burn 425 And props and poles into the hoard return ; 44 THE GEORGICS. Book II. Be last to harvest: twice umbrageous shade, And twice relentless weeds the vines invade ; The task is arduous, many acres charm, Be wise, and cultivate a smaller farm : 430 Hunt up the woods for holly, gather reeds, And strip the native withies on the meads, When vines are twined and pruning-knives repose, And when the wearied dresser whistling goes : Still, still the soil demands the hoe and share, 435 And still the gushing grape dreads Jupiter. The olive, on the other hand, demands Nor pruning-knife nor cultivated lands ; The hardy plant, which once has taken root, Asks but one ploughing to ensure the fruit, 440 Self-nourished in the earth and air they stand, Emblem of Peace and fatness of the land. The fruit-trees also on their valid stems Assert the innate vigour of their limbs, Their branching heads to Heaven they spread and span, 445 Nor ask assistance at the hand of man. Nor doth the savage forest fruitless lie, Wild berries blush on every aviary ; Book II. THE GEORGICS. 45 We browze its cytisus, we rend its fir For torch-light and nocturnal labourer. 450 And doth man doubt but that he ought to toil? Ask not of vines, or olives fat with oil, Ask of the humble willow and the broom Food for the flock and shelter for the groom, And hedge-row unto bees affording honey'd bloom. 455 Fair is the box on Cytoreian dales, Fair is the pine-tree in Narician vales, Fair is the native heath that never knew The hand of man, or felt the biting plough ; Fair are the sterile peaks of Caucasus, 460 Where Eurus reigns with wrath assiduous, They yield the mighty fir-tree to the flood, And cypress to the hall, and cedar-wood, The spokes and fellies of the wheels there grow, And there they fabricate the upcurved prow. 465 Elm-trees yield fodder, willow osiers bears, The myrtle darts, the cornel hafts of spears, Bends to a bow the Ityraean yew, And fashioned by the lathe alike we hew Light lime, and heavy box with biting steel ; 470 On Padan waters floats the alder keel, 46 THE GEORGICS. Book II. In ancient holms the bees a shelter find, Or hive within the hollow cortex rind. O Bacchus! thy good gifts when rightly used Cannot compare with these; but when abused 475 'Twas then they gave to Fate the Centaur crew, Their craters at the Lapithse they threw, Who, Pholus, Khoetus, and Hylseus, slew. happy, far too happy — did ye wot, Ye rustic swains, the blessings of your lot ; 480 Eemote from war, by labour ye are fed, And the impartial Earth, with daily bread ; What though no folding gates expanding wide Admit of morning worshippers the tide, No arch or posts triumphal guard that pass, 485 Thronged with gold vestments, Ephyreian brass, Though dyes Assyrian none your vestments soil, Nor cassia-scent corrupt your limpid oil; Yet, rest secure, and days devoid of strife, And rustic riches, innocence of life, 490 The cave, the lake sequestered, lowing kine, Some Tempo's shade, and sleep beneath the pine, All these are yours ; and in the forest-dell To track the lair of beasts therein that dwell ; Book II. THE GEOKGICS. 47 Your boys robust and frugal, full of fire, 495 Obedient to the Gods and to their sire, — Astra?a when she fled to Heaven, or ere She quitted Earth, left her last footmark here. And ye sister Muses, whom I love With sacred fervour all the world above, 500 O take me for your Seer ; give me to know The ways of Heaven above and Earth below, The paths sidereal and the Moon's new birth, The Sun's eclipses, and the throes of Earth, And by what force it is the rising tide 505 O'erflows the marsh, or how its waves subside ; Why Sol in winter hurries to his rest, And by what laws are summer-nights comprest ; But if the mortal pulse and frigid flow Prohibit man such mysteries to know, 510 Then let me haunt the rivers and the floods, The peaceful though inglorious fields and woods, Or of Taygetus and Spartan maids, Or of Sperchius and Thessalian glades, Or where the frigid peaks of Heemus soar, 515 Its calm retreats and wooded valleys o'er. 48 THE GEOEGICS. Book II. O happy is the man who may discern The cause of all that irks the heart to yearn; He fears not, he, inexorable fate, Nor Acherontine waves, insatiate; 520 And fortunate is he who may behold The rustic Gods, — Pan and Sylvanus old, And sisterhood of Nymphs ; — alike to him The Fasces and barbaric diadem : No more fraternal rage at home alarms 525 Than the far Dacian federate in arms ; He knows not poverty, nor envies pelf Of bankrupt nations or of Eoman wealth ; He gathers in the produce of his fields, What an all-kind and bounteous Nature yields, 530 And never heard the noisy Forum's roar, And never read the Tables of the Law. Some rush to sea, some where the battle rings, Some penetrate the halls and floors of kings ; Some towns and villages in ruin steep 535 In gems to drink, in Tyrian purple sleep ; One buries gold and couches it upon ; Another stuns the tribune with his tongue; Book II. THE GEOKGIOS. 49 One the Proscenium treads and, above all, Affects the plaudits of its great and small ; 540 One steeps in kindred blood his guilty hand, And flees an outcast to some foreign land ; The rustic wrestles only with the soil, His country reaps the first fruits of his toil, He feeds his household and deserving steer 545 And fatted herd, from the abounding year ; No rest allowed, in quick succession come, The flock in labour and the harvest-home, Gathering of fruit, manuring of the soil, Crushing the Sicyonian gland for oil ; 550 Woods yield their fruits, grapes ripen on the wall, And grunting swine munch acorns where they fall. Meantime his children clamber for his kiss, And chastity assures domestic bliss ; His kine afford exuberance of food, 555 And his kids fatten in their wanton mood; He keeps the holydays, stretched on the ground He lights his pyre, with crater ivy-bound ; Libations to Lenseus there he sheds, Invoking him; — the while the shepherd lads, 560 E 50 THE GEOKGICS. Book II. Bare their big limbs to wrestle on the plain, Or poise the dart in list agrestian : Such was the life the ancient Sabines knew, Snch Komulus and Kemns; — Etruria grew, And Rome e'en so became the chief of all, 565 Her seven hills encircled with one wall : Snch prior was to the Dictaean reign, Before nnholy feasts on oxen slain, In golden age and days Saturnian ; Or ere the brazen trumpet rung alar'ms, 570 Or ere the anvil forged unholy arms. Lo! now the space we've galloped at full speed, Now from the collar free the smoking steed. Book III. THE GBORGIOS. 51 BOOK III. rr^HOU too, great Pales, aucl thou renowned Amphrysian shepherd! shall the song resound, With woods and streams of the Lycsean ground: For every other tuneful theme of song Hath suffered iteration loud and long ; 5 Who hath not of the dire Eurystheus heard, Or hates Busiris not and altars weird, Hylas the boy, who hath not heard of him, Of Pelops and far-famed eburnian limb, Hippodamia, and race lost and won, 10 And floating Delos, — Isle Latonian! Untrodden yet the path and trackless way Whereby I fain would soar to brighter day ; O may I be the first to cease to roam, To lead Aonian muses to my home, 15 Boast Mantuan, and not Idumean palms ; And where our noble Mincius spreads his arms, e 2 52 THE GEORGICS. Book III. To build the pillared dome and marble fane To crown his willowed banks and verdant plain. In robe of triumph bright with Tyrian dye 20 There shall our Caesar stand, the deity ; Quadrigas there, a hundred, shall contend, Greece, the Alphaeus quitting, thither wend, And combatants shall there crude caestus don, And race, as erst in grove Molorchion. 25 There, crowned with olive garland, may I stand And victors take their laurels from my hand; There lead the slow procession to the fane, And view the victims on the altar slain ; Or in the Theatre confront the scene 30 Painted whereon are captive Britons seen; In gold and ivory above whose doors Are shown Gargaridan and Eoman wars, The bounding fleets where mighty Nilus flows, With rising columns girt with brazen prows, 35 The Asian cities, — conquered Niphates, The Parthian backward shooting as he flees, And duplicated trophies on each hand Recording triumphs over either land. Book III. THE GEORGICS. 53 There emulating life, in Parian stone, 40 The offspring of Assaracus be shown, Names that descended are from Jove and Tros, And Troy's immortal builder Cynthius ; And there shall Envy sit abashed, and seem To watch the Furies and Cocytus' stream, 45 The twisted serpents, and Ixion thrown The whirling wheel around ; and never-resting stone. But now Maecenas, let us now invade The Dryad forest and the Dryad glade Untrodden yet, — Thy precepts we obey 50 And follow as thy spirit prompts the way. Up and away, Cithseron opes her throat, Taygetus re-echoes the dogs' note, Equestrian Epidaurus on the main Takes up the echo and prolongs the strain ; 55 Soon must we boun' us for a loftier song, Of deeds that unto Caesar's wars belong, To times remote transmit the laurelled page, Far, far remote, as ours from Tithon's age. Ye who breed coursers for Olympic palms, 60 And ye who rear strong oxen for our farms, 54 THE GEOKGICS. Book III. Select for mothers those of choicest frame : These points become the ruminating dame, Broad shoulders, heavy head, and low'ring eyes, And dewlap from the muzzle to the thighs, 65 Huge depth of flank, huge — even to the feet, E'en hairy ears, and crumpled horns are meet ; The mottled-white bespotted cow we prize That butts with vigour and the yoke defies, With forehead like the bulls, and head erect 70 And tail depending to the ground bedeckt : At four years old she bears Lucina's throes, At ten the years of Hymenseals close, Unfit too for the yoke let her in age repose : Meantime let her enjoy the fleeting space, 75 And fill thy stalls with her selected race. For ah how fleetly speeds the little span Of lusty youth allowed to mortal man, Diseases grow, age comes, and joys decay, Till death demands his miserable prey. 80 Keplenish still thy stalls with stock preferred, And draft the beeves and heifers from the herd. The courser too demands, of him who rears, Freedom from labour from his earliest years. Book III. THE GEOKGICS. 55 The generous colt walks with a head elate, 85 And treads the sod with proud but supple gait, Undaunted leads the way, — unchecked will brave The bridge unknown or breast the torrent wave ; The elements for him no terrors have. With crested neck, and fine and slender head, 90 Short bodied, back with muscle broadly spread, In equal brawn his proud and dauntless breast, And colour — gray or chesnut are the best, Not white or dun : — then if he hears afar The clanging trumpet or the din of war, 95 He pricks his ears, he quivers at the sound, With fire ypent he neighs and paws the ground ; On his right shoulder falls the heavy mane, His solid hoof smites the resounding plain, The bulging loins — his double spine retain. 100 Such steed the Amyclsean Pollux bore Hight Cy liar us, and known in Grecian lore. Such in his rushing Biga Mars restrained ; Such' in his battle car Achilles reined; Yea e'en in such a form did Saturn fly 105 Surprised by Rhea, in his gallantry ; 56 THE GEORGICS. Book III. With flowing inane he scuttled o'er the ground, And Pelio- echoed to his nostrils' sound. Should years or sickness the good steed depress, House him thy stall within, nor tend him less: 110 Useless in feat of love, or feat of war, He fires in age like flame in wisp of straw, A sudden burst of inane flame, — no more : Be careful then to mark their age and race, Their courage in their antecedents trace, 115 Their grief when overcome, — their glory at the palm : Dost thou not see how emulation warm Enflames the breasts of young competitors When in the lists the bounding car appears, How, hopes elate and fears depress the heart, 120 How, slackened reins and twisted thongs, they start With fervent speed their headlong coursers fly, The chariot sinking low and bounding high; Now midway borne aloft 'twfxt earth and air, Onward they speed, on in the fierce career, 125 Thro' clouds of sand and scattered foam they hie, Such love of praise and strife for victory. 'Twas Erichthonius first conjoined the four y And rode triumphant on the rapid car : Book III. THE GEORGICS. 57 The Peletlironian Lapithse, more late 130 Constrained the steed to bear the warrior's weight, And reined him at full speed or maneged him for state. The task is equal, both alike demand Courage and skill, and magisterial hand. Youth, youth is indispensable, altho' 135 The veteran ne'er turned him from a foe, Tho' from Epirus or Mycense sprung, Or ranking Neptune's progeny among. Forearmed on these points, in the genial tide Feed up the future bridegroom of the bride, 140 Herbs succulent and waters to his will, And corn to boot, to eat and drink his fill, Nor let the progeny decline in fire Degenerate, beneath a fasting sire, Not so the mother mares, — deny to them 145 Their wonted fodder and pellucid stream, — Urge them to panting speed beneath the sun ^*- When the piled threshing-floor he shines upon ; Nor suffer sloth and indolence to foil The native vigour of a genial soil. 150 But then reverse the fodder and the fare, Dismiss the sire from thought and tend the mare ; 58 THE GEOKGICS. Book III. Thro' her appointed months, no work be done, No yoking to the wain, no courses run, No leaping dykes and ditches, breaking bounds, 155 Swimming of floods, or scucldings over grounds ; But by the brooks in forest glade to feed, To lie on mossy bed in fragrant weed, With cave of rock to shelter in at need. The groves of Silarus, oaks evergreen 160 That fringe the banks Alburnus flows between, A flying pest them haunts, — in Roman fame Asilus hight, CEstros the Grecian name. Rough and harsh buzzing, when the herds it hear They flee amain, and bellowing in fear 165 Startle the Avoods and banks of Tanager: 'Twas Juno sent this pestilence on us Embittered 'gainst the child of Inachus; During the midday heats they noisome are, So feed 'neath morning grey or 'neath the ev'ning star. 170 The parturition over, tend the young, t And brand the name and race from whence they sprung : Mark those you destine at the Fanes to bleed, Mark and select those you design for breed, Book III. THE GEORGICS. 59 Mark those for toil, to labour at the plough, L75 The rest that form the herd let feed and grow. Now for the drudging ox : ye that take Pleasure and pains agrarian teams to break, Whilst they are young and docile let them know To bear the yoke, the task to undergo : 180 With a loose collar of enwreathed vine Subject their necks, and soon as they resign To such light servitude, then yoke a brace, And teach them to progress with equal pace, Then yoke them to the light revolving wheel 185 To follow with a weight they scarcely feel. Next to the axles of the loaded wain And with the pole and collar them constrain, But meantime feed them well, not grass alone, Or leaves of willow, or the sedge marsh grown, 190 Nor as our sires, of mother's milk defraud, But give them corn, corn from the garnered hoard. And if your views be martial, if you breed The snorting courser or the swifter steed To challenge bays Pisaean in the grove 195 Alphams of, and of Olympic Jove, 60 THE GEORGICS. Book III. Accustom them betimes to pomps of war, The clanging trumpet and the rumbling car; Let them in stall the clang of armour hear, And to its pomp accustom eye and ear ; 200 Then let them learn their master's voice to know, And arch the neck to his applausive blow ; And when the mother mare her dug denies, Or ere in wanton confidence he hies, Subject betimes his mouth to bit and rein ; — 205 And when the summer fourth he shall attain Let him essay the course, and pace around With step alternate and responsive sound : Next urge him to his speed with easy hand When scouring earth he hardly scars the sand. 210 So hyperborean Aquilon e'en so Drives arid clouds from realms of Scythian snow, The corn lies low, the reeds and rushes quake, The forests groan, the surging billows break, As over sea, o'er land he leaves a wasted wake. 215 To win Elean bays such steed is fit, Proud in his froth and foam and bloodied bit, But for the din of battle fitter far, With prouder neck yoked to the Belgic car: Book III. THE GEOKGICS. 61 Pamper him not, till he be fully broke, 220 The full conditioned courser spurns the yoke, But when amenable to whip and rein Feed to the full and urge his pride again. And, Oh of love beware, avert the flame Of Venus, sore enfeebler of the frame; 225 And whether it be steed or whether steer The wanton herd he never must come near ; A mountain barrier, or flood oppose Or with high fence his feeding place enclose ; An' if he see the fair one he will burn, 230 Forget his food, his once loved meadows scorn, And pine e'en so : — The gentle heifer strays And crops with careless step the forest braes, The whilst the rivals madden at the sight, And rush to headstrong and determined fight, 235 Horn grapples horn, and blow encounters blow, Their flanks are gored, the tides of black blood flow, They give and they receive the mighty wound, Olympus, and the Sylvans echoing round. Nor will they feed or herd together more; 240 The vanquished seeks some lone untrodden shore, 62 THE GEORGICS. Book III. There mourns his ignominy, — nurtures hate, Kemembers his lost love and fallen state ; He goes, — but casts behind a lingering look, Beneath the blast he couches on the rock, 245 On thorny pasture and on scrub he feeds, Stalwart he grows, and confidence succeeds ; His newborn strength he tries, against a tree He rushes as against his enemy, Lashing the wind, spurning the yellow sand, 250 From banishment, — on the paternal land He and the foe unwary meet again : — So gathering rolls the billow of the main, A streak of foam afar, — a streak no more, It gathers in its course, it rolls on shore, 255 It dashes on the rock, — it bursts in spray, Black sand and eddying surge its wanton force bewray. Ay, all that breathe the breath of life yprove Alike, the unresisted fire of love : Man, beast, the aqueous tribe, the lowing herds, 260 And denizens of air, the painted birds; The tawny lioness forsakes her den, Forsakes her cubs, and dares the haunts of men : Book III. THE GEORGICS. G3 Then do the bear uncouth, the savage boar, And tigress, most relentless, rage and roar, 265 Fearful the sound to the awakened ear, On Lybian wastes, of the lone traveller! Behold the steed, how he with fervour glows; Deem you, he'll heed of man the bit or blows ? Nor rocks, nor precipice, nor torrent's force 270 Shall bourn his headlong and resistless course ; See the Sabelline swine, — in lair aloof He furbishes his tusks, his hide and hoof. And puts his rival's clumsy strength to proof: See man in youth impetuous, 'tis the same, 275 When his young spirit feels the ruthless flame He heeds not then the storm or tempest's power, The surging billow or the midnight hour, He breasts the flood, nor deems of mother's sighs, Or maiden dying when her lover dies. 280 So doth the spotted lynx of Bacchus rave, Wolves, dogs, unwarlike deer, like transports have, But most of all the mare, so Venus willed At Potnia, when was overturned and killed Glaucus, their lord, by his quadriga's mares. 285 They swim the flood, burst mountain barriers, 64 THE GEORGICS. Book III. Mount Gargarus, and Ascanius' flood; And when the spring returning heats their blood, They turn to Zephyrus, on rocks they stand, And intercept the breeze, and thereby fanned, 290 (Tho' hardly credible) they gravid grow, And pangs maternal without wedlock know; Then o'er the rocks and thro' the valleys flee, Not Zephyrus nor Eurus, unto ye — To realms where Boreas or rough Caurus reigns, 295 Or foggy Auster puffing wind and rains ; There they distil Hippomanes, of power To aid the stepdame in her evil hour, With charm and drug of baneful herb and flower : But onward, onward, whilst we chant of love 300 Doth unrespective Time in onward silence move. Enough of herds, remaineth now to note The woolly breeding sheep and hoary goat : Toil, but much gain, they yield ye, colonists. Ah me, ah me, such simple subject lists 305 Expressions apt for honours meetly due: But now Parnassus rises to my view, Its rocky summits open to my ken, Oh let me climb a path unknown to men, Book III. THE GEORGICS. 05 And drink Castalian waters from the spring 310 Now, Alma Pales now, instruct thy Seer to sing. Keep in the first place all the sheep in fold, And feed them well pending the frost and cold ; Spare not the litter, give them sheaves of straw, And guard from murrain, rot, and mornings raw. 315 Next for the goats, for them let leafy food And living waters daily be renewed; Fold to the southern sun, and fence the rear When cold Aquarius concludes the year. What tho' these last yield not such rich supply 320 Of fleece Milesian steeped in Tyrian dye, Yet well do they repay an equal care In larger offspring and more milky ware ; Exuberant the store the goat bestows, The more you milk the more her udder flows; 325 And well the camp, and well the sailors know, Cinyphean wares, and comforts they bestow. They haunt Lycsean heights, crop scanty fare From woods and scrub and rocks that desert are ; At evenfall, with strutting dugs they come 330 And lead instinctively their young ones home, F 66 THE GEORGICS. Book III. And tho' they prescience lack, man's hand supplies The plenty their improvidence denies, Supplies them arbutus in sheltered fold, And opes the granary in frost and cold. 335 And when sweet spring returns, by zephyrs borne, Then lead them forth beneath the early morn, The sheep to meadow and the goats to grove, Whilst Lucifer resplendent beams above, Whilst sweeter by the dews of morning made 340 The pearl-drop glistens on the tender blade. In the fourth hour, when the red sun rides high And shrill cicadse sing on every tree, Lead them to drink the living flood below, Or where thro' trough of wood fresh waters flow; 345 Then seek the cool retreat, — the shady grove, Or where in mighty strength the oak of Jove With spreading branches shades the holy ground, And Ilex sheds eternal freshness round ; In such a glen or sacred grove take rest 350 'Till Phoebus shine obliquely from the west, Then Hesperus the freshness will renew, Then humid night repairs exhausted dew, Book III. THE GEORGICS. G7 Then on the shore the Halcyon notes resound, And linnets warble on each bush around. 355 And now of Libyan shepherds, how they fare, And roofs Mapalian thinly scattered there ; By day and night for months and months they stray Their lonely and interminable « ay ; They lead the flock the bound And trackless plains for pasturage explore. The Afric roves with all his ^ round, His tent, his lar, with Cressan quiver bound, And trusty bow, and Amyclsean hound : — So stands the Koman soldier in his might 365 When he dons armour in his country's right And falls on hostile camp in unexpected fight. Not so the Scythian on Maeotic strands Where Ister disembogues his yellow sands, And Khodope, descended from the Pole. 370 Stabled in stall, the beasts receive their dole From hand of man, nor herb nor leaf remains Where hills of snow incrust the joyless plains, Seven cubits deep ; where winter holds his court And where the bitter Caurus maketh sport. 375 F 2 68 THE GEOKGICS. Book III. Sol hath no power there, — he rears his crest, His wearied steeds seek Oceanic rest, Nor mist nor cloud disperse at his behest. The running rivers harden as they flow, The waters bear the wain that bore the prow, 380 Garments grow stiff with ice, — brass vessels break, Oonci be once limpid lake, The stroke ?s liquor from the can, on the beard of man, 1 ei flocks unfolded the deep snow prevails, 385 The oxen's mighty bulk them nought avails, The herded deer unused to loads succumb, The branching antlers now betray their tomb, Nor dog nor net is needed to insnare Nor Punic feathers fluttering him to scare: 390 Vainly the quarry struggles in the snow, Vainly he strives to shun the falling blow, The victors' shout of joy proclaim the victim low. They to their deep subterrene cave retire And feed with unhewn trunks the mighty fire, 395 Pass livelong nights in play, and quaff again Potations sour, brewed from crude fruit, or grain. Book III. THE GEORGICS. G9 Beneath Triones Hyperborean Swept by Byphgean Eurus, clwelleth man In tawny skins yclad, so rude and wan. 400 But if thine aim be wool, avoid the scrubs, Nor pasture amidst burrs and thorny shrubs, And the fat pastures shun : — in fleece of white Unsullied, let the patriarch ram be dight ; And look his mouth within, no tawny tongue, 405 Lest sable spots be found the lambs among, Beject such, and select thy fairest male: In such a fleece, (an it be true, the tale) Pan, god Arcadian, captivated thee, Luna divine ! beneath the forest tree. 410 And give, an if the store of milk rank first, Lotos and Cytisus, exciting thirst. The more they drink the more the yield is great. And the milk savours of the food they eat : Some to the young the mother's teats forbid, 415 And nozzle with sharp spikes the calf and kid ; Press during night the stores they yield by day, At dawning morning Pastor haste away, Bear off thy cheeses fresh to market town, Save what for winter use is stored and salted down. 420 70 THE GEORGICS. Book III. Not last or least the faithful clog uphold, Thy Spartan fleet, or thy Molossian bold; Give hirn the whey, and trust him for relief From wolf, Iberian brigand — and the thief: Attendant on thy pastime will he go 425 And chase the onager, the hare or roe, Will force the stubborn boar to stand at bay, And fright to nets the antler'd stag a prey. With cedar shavings fumigate thy stall, Purge with Galbanean incense floor and wall : 430 The baneful viper, hating light and air, Will nestle underneath and harbour there; The snake will seek the roof-tree and its gloom, And shed, o'er beasts below, disease and doom; Arm shepherds, arm with staves and stones your hands, 435 And tumid wrath and fangs oppose with brands, Smite, chase them forth, the blow can hardly fail, If that the head be hidden, smite the tail, Slowly the wounded snake a crippled coil doth trail. Calabria hath a vile malignant snake, 440 Haunting the rough uncultivated brake, His back bescaled, spotted the breast below ; The whilst the rivers break their bounds and now. Book III. THE GEOKGICS. 71 And Auster pouretk waters from the skies, He haunts the marsh, on rushy bank he lies, 445 And fish and frog, glut his insatiate maw; And when the pools are dry and earth is hoar, Thirsty and wrathful rangeth he the wolds, And arid lands, with glaring eyes beholds : Not then, not then, on herbage soft would I, 450 Or beneath shady tree soft slumbering lie, Whilst with cast slough, in youth renewed and strong- Abandoning his nest-eggs, or his young, He lifts his crested head, — vibrates his triple tongue. Diseases now, cause and effects, behold: 455 When turpicl murrain lights upon the fold, When grease adheres to hides but newly shorn, Or harmed by frost, or lacerating thorn ; Then drive them where the living waters flow And where the pool lies deep its bank below, 460 Hurl in the ram adown the stream to swim, And urge the flock to plunge and follow him : Anoint them newly shorn with lees of oil, With litharge, and with brimstone rub and moil, Idsean pitch, wax, fat, in unguent strain 465 With garlick, hellebore, and bitumen : — 72 THE GEOKGICS. Book III. But after all, no remedy is found To equal the cold steel, incise a wound, Give ills their vent, worse by concealment made, The whilst the shepherd, sitting in the shade, 470 Doth supplicate the Heavens above for aid. — But if the malady hath pierced the reins And arid fever revels. in the veins, Avert its force by bleeding in the foot; Such practice the Bisaltan shepherds moot, 475 And on Mount Bhoclope the Gelon rude, And Getan of the desert, quaffing food Of curdled milk mingled with horses' blood. If far and all apart you see one lie, Or snuffle at the pasture listlessly, 480 Or cease to feed, — or mope in weary plight, To fold returning by itself at night, The knife must expiate such fault, before The dread contagion spreadeth any more ; Not more disastrously doth Hyems rave, 485 When he in wrath bursts on the troubled wave, Than such contagion sheds upon the fold; On flock and herd alike it taketh hold, And perish all alike the stalwart young and old. Book III. THE GEORGICS. 73 They know this well, who past the Alpine bounds 490 Have seen the Noric camp's deserted mounds, Or where Timavus laves Japidian land ; After long lapse of years their deserts stand Vacant and silent, since the fatal times The Heavens shed contagion on their climes ; 495 In the autumnal heats the cattle died, Beasts of the forests fell on every side, Water grew poisonous, — corrupt the heath ; Not one or simple was the mode of death, Not arid veins, thirst, fevered blood alone, 500 But clammy sweats corrupting blood and bone ; Oft would the victim, whilst the priesthood bound The sacred fillets, fall without the wound, Nor sacred fane nor priesthood him avails, Death, at the altars of the Gods, prevails; 505 Tho' holy steel should strike the fatal blow, The fires upon the altar failed to glow, The offered entrails unconsumecl remained, Kesponse nor presage aught the seer obtained; For ere the cultrum, held by holy hand, 510 Shed blood on earth, did venom taint its sand ; 74 THE GEORGICS. Book III. In the replenished stalls, as on the heath, Alike the steer and heifer yield their breath, The faithfal hound grows rabid, and a low Ignoble sound proclaims the stifled sow. 515 The steed, the victor steed, with humbled pride, Turns from his pasture and its bubbling tide, Smites with his foot, perchance as cold he grows With intermittent sweat that ebbs and flows, Eigid his hide, not yielding to the touch, 520 Such the premonitory signs, — e'en such ; As it progresses fiery beam his eyes, His palpitating flanks yield heavy sighs, The tide of black blood from the nostrils wells, And in the arid throat the rough tongue swells. 525 The horn of wine Lensean seems to be A little respite in the malady; But now it changes, and his passion grows Headlong and headstrong in his mortal throes, — (Gods! shield us! and where so much error is 530 Avert from us such dreadful remedies) With cruel teeth he tears himself and dies. The toiling ox before the share lies low, In bloody foam behold the life-blood flow ; Book III. THE GEOKGICS. 75 The lone companion of the fallen beast 535 Is by the grieving ploughboy's hand released, They leave the ploughshare bedded in the clay, And homeward wend their melancholy way. Nor wooded shades, nor the soft meadow's side, Nor river gleaming in its pearly pride, 540 Nought, nought can for the healthful beam atone Or soothe the spirit when its strength is gone. With sides collapsed and heavy heads amazed They stand, with cheerless eyes, by stupor glazed ; Their worth avails them not, their daily toil, 545 And acres of ameliorated soil ; No feasts had they or revelries abused, No draughts of Bacchant Massican misused, The leaves and herbs supplied their simple food, They drank the limpid waters of the flood, 550 And sleep from cares exempt their wasted strength renewed. 'Tis handed down, that then and there in vain Tavo bulls were sought to draw Saturnia's wain, That the unbroken Uri served their stead, And to the high Donaria were led : 555 The countryman was fain to hoe the land And cast the seed in furrows made by hand ; 76 THE GEOEGICS. Book III. No ravening wolf infested then the fold, Disease more fell had quelled his hunger bold ; The does and deer forsook their native glen 560 And roamed the civic haunts of dogs and men ; The monsters of the deep like fate endure Like shipwrecked corpses cast upon the shore, The tribes of Phocse sink in depths unknown, The viper dies in its deep den of stone, 565 The bristling hydra yields its dying groan ; Foul and infectious grows the atmosphere, The denizens of clouds are smitten there: Nor change of pasturage, nor drugs avail, The arts remedial of physic fail, 570 Physicians fail, — Chiron Phillyrides, Melampus or, — art baffled by disease; Sent from the Stygian regions to the light Pallid Tisiphone asserts her might ; Behold her urge her pestilent career 575 Attended by her handmaids Plague and Fear: The flowing rivers and once balmy heath Resound the varied utterance of death ; The stalls polluted render up the slain, And tumuli are heaped upon the plain, 580 Book III. THE GEORGICS. 77 Until the heaps refuse to bury more And bodies in the pit are covered o'er. The very hides were useless, fire nor wave Could purge the odour or the foulness lave, The wool was useless, nothing could release 585 Inherent venom from the tainted fleece ; Whoe'er profanely dared such garment don, Blains, fiery boils, and fevers seized upon; From tainted blood foul perspiration ran, And the infernal fire preyed on man. 590 I Book IV. THE GEORGICS. 79 BOOK IV. A EEIAL Honey, gift celestial, hail ! Once more, Maecenas, let my theme prevail, Nor lightly hold the subject of the song; Kings and Communities to it belong, Manners and Instincts, wars of right or wrong; 5 Light subjects win high praise, provided aye No God oppose and Phoebus prompt the lay. First choose a fitting homestead for the hive, And sheltered from the breeze, for breezes drive The laden wanderers returning home; 10 Thither forbid the browzing kid to roam, Nor let the errant heifer e'er disturb The morning dew or crush the budding herb; The long-backed painted lizard keep afar, The Merops, and all birds that hostile are, 15 And Procne with her bosom stained with blood ; That soaring devastates with ruthless mood, And crams her callow young with dulcet food. 80 THE GEOKGICS. Book IV- Be gushing fountains there, and beds of reeds And rills of water rushing thro' the meads ; 20 For vestibule some olive old, or palm, That, when the king in springtide leads the swarm And heads the youngsters issuing from the comb, The running stream may lure, or ere they roam, And hospitable foliage lend a home. 25 Whether the waters live or stagnant be, Cast rocks therein and boughs of willow-tree, That so the wearied wanderers may drink, Bathe their light wings, or dry them on the brink, If that perchance the furious Eurus cast 30 Their feeble bodies in the waters vast ; Plant then green cassia there and rosemary And widely-breathing thyme, and savory, And violets — where running waters be. And for the hive, whether the hollowed bark 35 Or woven osiers form its chamber dark, Narrow its entrance, for the winter's cold Congeals, as summer melts, its hoard of gold : The Bees fear each extreme, and clog with care Each orifice and aperture of air, 40 Book IV. THE GEORGICS. 81 With wax and gluten gathered from the flowers, Viscous as pitch from Phrygian Ida's bowers. And oft they scoop, if fame speak truth, their cave, And in the earth and darkness dwelling have, Deep in the pumice rock dig galleries, 45 And haunt interiors of hollow trees; Therefore prepare some light and unctuous loam, And mixed with leaves anoint their crannied home. Koast not a crab, avoid the baneful yews, Avoid the miasmatic marsh and dews, 50 All dirt and loathsome scents avoid and shun, And rocks resounding unto Echo's tongue. And when the golden Sol doth drive away The frosty Hyems with his brighter day, To grove and glade the wanderers repair; 55 They cull the purple blossoms here and there, And sip the running waters as they flow, And thence inspired, but how I do not know, Some happy instinct prompts them to provide For progeny, to build with conscious pride 60 The waxen cell, where stores of honey bide. And when you see, some balmy breathing day The issuing swarm appear and wing its way o 82 THE GEOEGICS. Book IV. Like to a cloud wafted on wings of wind, Water and shade, be sure, they seek to find; 65 Haste now, and with the scents they love, them greet, Bruised rnelisphylla and the woodbine sweet, Our mother's cymbals beat, strike the alarm, They on the medicated seats will swarm, And in the hive ensconce from light and harm. 70 But should they issue forth when discord sows Betwixt two kings the seeds of war and woes, Then straightway do we recognize afar The fearless bustle and the din of war ; E'en as the brazen trumpet, in the field 75 Impels the ardent, rallies those that yield, They rush to their battalions, — prove their wings, Nerve legs and thighs, and furbish up their stings, Headquarters and their king they rally round And call the foe with a defiant sound ; 80 Then in an hour serene, to fields of air s From their prsetorium, they to fight repair, They mingle and they fall, as from the oak The acorns fall in autumn, tempest-struck; Amongst the ranks conspicuous speed the kings 85 With boiling courage and superior wings, Book IV. THE GEORGICS. 83 With souls magnanimous they fight and die, Till force superior win the victory. Now in such case all this contention warm, A little dust cast o'er them will disarm. 90 And when both kings are driven from the plain, Destroy the worst, chase rivalry amain, And let the better o'er the kingdom reign. Fair is the form of him you must select; Of golden hue with shining spots bedeckt; 95 Foul is the other, for the kinds are twain, With a huge body of a murky stain : And e'en as are the kings their subjects are, Like to a lump of dust do these appear; Those shine and glitter in their fairer mould 100 With spotted bodies glittering like gold; Those be thy care, and at the proper hour Liquid and dulcet be the garnered store To meliorate in Bacchus, flavours sour. But should the swarm play truant, should they fly, 105 Scorning the hive and labour, in the sky, Prohibit play to the deluded fools, Again the kings become thy easy tools, G 2 84 THE GEORGICS. Book TV. Cut off their wings ; all will to camp repair, Whilst they behold the standard planted there. 110 Let croceate blossoms lure with balmy breath, And place the hive the guardianship beneath, With willow rod affrighting birds and man, Priapus of Hellespontiacan. And ye who in such trouble take a pride, 115 Sow thyme around, and mountain-pines provide ; Contemn not toil, but with thine own right hand Plant flowering plants and drench the planted land. Now I behold my journey almost o'er, Or ere I furl my sail and put to shore, 120 Perchance I ought on garden-flowers to prose ; Of the twice-blossoming sweet Psestum rose, Of thirsty succory, of parsley green, Of cucumbers, with tortuous bine between The herbage dank, or bulging into fruit, 125 Of the acanthus with its flexile shoot, Of the narcissus and the ivy hoar, And myrtle on its loved and cherished shore. For when I 'mind me of (Ebalia's walls, And of the lands where black Galesus falls, 130 Book IV. THE GEOKGICS. 85 The old Corycius comes into my mind : He held some acres, by all else resigned, Unfitted for the plough, for flocks unfit, And for the Bacchanalian vine unmeet ; Amidst this scrub his plots of herbs found room, 135 Verbense, lilies, and the poppies' bloom, Kings equalled not the heart's content he owed As eve returning, feasts unbought bestowed. Spring's earliest rose was his and autumn's store, And when the winter closed the cabin-door 140 He cropped, e'en then, leaves of acanthus green, And railed on Zephyrus and frosts unseen; Therefore he nourished Bees in hives untold, And first from honeycomb expressed its gold, He planted linden-trees, and fruitful pines, 145 And elms slow growing in appointed lines; His fruit-trees glorious in their vernal suit Were equalled in their stock of autumn fruit, Pears on their stocks, plums on the thorn appear, And spreading plane for festal shade was there. 150 But here I leave Corycius, to resume The theme, for which my narrowed space lacks room. 86 THE GEOKGICS. Book IV. Now, Muse, proceed, let us propound the laws Which Jupiter to Bees assigned, because By song Curetan and the cymbals led, 155 In cave Dictsean, Heaven's "King was fed. They, only, hold in common sons and hive, And under common roofs in cities live; They under laws unchangeable, alone One country and domestic worship own ; 160 Mindful of coming winter, see them toil, And in the summer hoard the common spoil ; Purveyors some, for provender who roam, And scour the fields around; and some at home, With the bark's gluten and Narcissus' tear, 165 The waxen frame from its foundations rear: They form the waxen cells, they educate The rising youth, hope of the future state; Of purest honey they their loads distil, And every cell with liquid nectar fill: 170 Some stand by lot as wardens, and explore The changeful vault of Heaven o'er and o'er; Some ease the wearied wanderers of their load. And others' lot it is to chase abroad Book IV. THE GEORGICS. 87 The idle herd of drones; their common aim 175 Is fragrant honey redolent of thyme. As when the Cyclops forge the bolts of Jove, With what alacrity they move, remove, Urge the alternate blast from tough bull-hide, Or plunge the hissing metal in the tide, 180 Etna resounds their hammers' equal peal The whilst the forceps bites the molten steel ; So if t be lawful to compare the twain, Some instinct moves the Bees Cecropian Up To their reciprocal desire of gain. 185 The seniors keep the walls, they tend the comb, Foundations lay of their Daedalian home, The whilst the younger part at matin prime, At eve returning, thighs beclogged with thyme, Despoiling arbutus, their course is sped 190 O'er yellow willows, casia, crocus red, The hyacinth ferruginous and lime: They all observe slumber's appointed time, They rise and forth they go at morning dawn, And Hesperus appearing they return ; 195 They reach the hive, refresh their wearied plight, And buzzing round the threshold they alight, 88 THE GEOKGICS. Book IV. Into their dormitory cells they creep, And night and silence lnll them into sleep. If on the morrow Enrns blow, or rain, 200 Safe within civic precincts they remain, Or short excursions make. Anon they fly With ballast of small stone beneath the sky, Like to the bounding bark upon its trackless way. Strange thing of all, they lack the sexual sense, 205 The Bees indulge in no concupiscence, No pangs of love insane, no throes of birth; Their future sons they gather from the earth From herb and blossom, and perpetuate Their king, their young Quirites, and their state. 210 And some in wandering wound their wings and die, Still, still they hug their loads, as prone they lie, Such is their love of sweets, such glory in their prey. And thus, altho' their mortal term be short, Say seven summers, they decay not aught; 215 Immortal stands their race and dynasty, From age to age, thro' long posterity. Besides, not Egypt's sons, nor Lydian, Nor Parthian, nor Hydaspan Median, Book IV. THE GEORGICS. 89 Observe such deep respect unto their king ; 22< i With him, concordant all and flourishing, Without him all discordant, forth they roam, Scatter the honey, and destroy the comb; Whilst he o'erlooks, they gather him around, And own their gladness with a buzzing sound 225 Escort him, carry him, and fight — and fall With joy and gladness unequivocal. And by these signs and these examples led, There are who deem, that upon Bees is shed A portion of th' ethereal soul divine 230 Of God, pervading earth and seas of brine, The deep-blue vault above, the heart of man, Beast, brute, and all that militate life's span ; That all return to elements again Subject no more to death, but to the plain, 235 The azure plain they flee, and join its starry train. And when you raid their treasures, arm thine hand With sprinkling waters and a smoking brand : Two honey-harvests crown the passing year When first Taygeta, the Pleiad fair ! 240 Eises, and when she couches in the main, Chased by Australis Piscis, and the rain. 90 THE GEOEGICS. Book IV. Beware, ye swains, that raid the honey-store When headlong rage discriminates no more, They launch the venomed wound on all they find, 245 And leave their sting and leave their life behind. But if you fear a rigorous winter-time, And famine and the frost, then scatter thyme, And take all empty wax forth from the hives; For oft the lizard hybernating lives . 250 In empty waxen cell, the tinea there, And the drone, lurking in another's lair, The hornet in his tyrannising might, And the enveloped woodlouse, hating light, Arachne, noted by Minerva's hate, 255 Spreads web and woof before the very gate; Ah ! for them, poor and needy, you must strive With greater zeal to let them live and thrive, Kestoring stores to the exhausted hive. And when they suffer sickness and disease, 260 For, as with mortals, ills attend on Bees, They will betray it by some certain sign : They lose their colour, lean, they droop and pine, Forth from the hive they bear departed Bees, And sadly minister their obsequies ; 265 Book IV. THE GEORGICS. 91 Or knitted feet to feet they form a chain, Or shut within the precincts, they remain The prey of rabid famine and of frost ; Deep grows their lazy buzz, its gladness lost, Like wintry Auster amidst leafless trees, 270 Like as the shore repelling refluent seas, Or raging flames ypent in furnaces. Burn fumes Galbanean in such case, and feed With their own honey, spread in hollow reed, Lure them, if lure you can, to known repast; 275 Add juice of oak-apple and roses brast, Psythian grapes, wine mulled by fire and time, Centaurean incense and Cecropian thyme. There is a meadow-weed, Amellus, wist By simple-gathering rural herbalist; 280 Upon its single stem maint blossoms grow, Its flowers golden, but its leaf in hue Yies with the purple of the violet, Its taste is harsh, the peasant seeks for it On the mown meadows where the Mella strays, 285 Culled to wreathe altars upon festal days ; Infuse its root in Bacchus, and the brew Offer in canisters the Bees unto. 92 THE GEOBGICS. Book IV. But if it hap the race should disappear, Nor means whereby to renovate be near, 290 Behoves to call to mind Arcadia's reign, Where from corrupted blood of oxen slain, Bees ofttimes spring. — Now let me trace This Fame to fountain-head and secret place : 295 For where Canopus, Town Pellsean, stands Where Nilus overflows its happy lands, Where painted barges float his fields above; And also where the quivered Persians rove, And where iEgyptus fecundates his sand 300 Bursting thro' seven mouths the ocean strand, To the far stream of swarthy India, All these possess the secret to repair The loss of Bees from the corrupted steer. First choose the spot, narrow the space and small, 305 Cover with tiles, and gird it with its wall ; Through orifices four, admit the day, From the four winds and with an oblique ray, Choose a young bull with horns at two years old, Him by the nostrils seize and struggling hold, 310 Book IV. THE GEORGICS. 93 So shall his bowels putrefying bide Within the unscathed precincts of the hide. Deposit him within and leave him there With leafy branches, thyme and casia — Do this when Zephyr hovers o'er the main, 315 Or ere fair colours deck the wood and plain, Or ere the chattering swallow, welcome guest ! Dependent from the roof-tree builds its nest. Meantime as vital tumours tepify, And tender bones and body putrefy, 320 Behold ! reanimation doth begin ; A trunk at first, then by degrees they win Their feet and strident wings, anon they rise In number numberless and blur the skies, Thick as the driving drops of summer rain, 325 Thick as the Parthian arrows, when they strain Their matchless bows on the embattled plain. What God, ye sister Muses, gave to man This further boon, — say whence it began. The Pastor Aristseus left his bees 330 The prey of ruthless famine and disease, He left Peneian Tempe, and he stood Venting the plainings of his bitter mood Upon the sacred fountain of its flood. 94 THE GEOEGICS. Book IV. Mother Cyrene, Mother, that dost dwell 335 In these unfathomed depths in secret cell, Say why am I, by Fates and Fortune, stung: An' if I be indeed from Heaven sprung, And if Thymbrseus Phoebus be my sire. Wherefore diclst thou to Heaven bid me aspire? 340 Is all your former love towards me gone ? Lo ! the one thing I placed my love upon Midst flocks and harvests, that I made my part Is rudely reft, and thou my Mother art ! Go on, protecting Parent, let thy hand 345 Tear down my groves and blight my planted land, Level with fire my stalls, and blast each root, The whilst thy two-fold axe assails the shoot : Such actions with thy love, such with my glory suit. His Mother heard the plaint her couch upon, 350 Her nymphs around Milesian fleeces spun, Tinted with saturating dye marine, Drymo and Xantho, Ligea there are seen, Phyllodyce with o'er suffusing hair, Nessee, Spio bright, and Thalia fair, 355 Cydippe and Lycorias, one a maid But one had once invoked Lucina's aid, Book IV. THE GEORGICS. 95 Clio and Beroe, Oceanidcs, Sisters, with zones of gold and glorious dyes, Opis, Ephyre, and Cymodoce, 360 Deiopeia Asian, and nigh Swift Arethusa, Dian's shafts laid by : And unto these did Clymene relate How Vulcan vainly strove against his fate, The wiles of Mars, the thrilling thefts of love, 365 From Chaos, thickly chronicled above. Caught by the song the pensile spindles slept: Again the plaint of Aristseus swept And fell upon the quick maternal ear, On seats translucent each nymph bent to hear, 370 But first and foremost Arethusa sprung And reared her golden locks the waves among, And from afar — It was no empty tone, Sister Cyrene, this grief is thine own, 'Tis Aristaeus weeping on the wave 375 Peneus of, invoking thee to save. The breast maternal struck with sudden fear Cyrene calls, lead hither, lead him here, Thresholds divine for him no barriers have : Then by her simple will she cleft the wave, 380 96 THE GEOEGICS. Book IV. And girt with waters which o'erarching stood, The youth descended the paternal flood : He marvelled much at the maternal home, The realm of rivers in the crystal dome, There were the secret founts, in cave or grove, 385 Of every river ere it burst above. Stunned he beheld the waters in their force, Phasis and Lycus, and each secret source Whence Enipeus, whence Tiberinus sprung, Whence Anio and whence Hypanis was flung. 390 Thro' rifted rocks, and Mysian Cai'cus, And, with twain taurine horns, Eridanus, Golden Eridanus, none swift as he Flows 'twixt more fertile banks or meets a brighter sea. From her spread couch, the pumice dome below 395 Cyrene heard the tale of filial woe : Water is proffered by the sister band, And fleeces spread, the work of their own hand. Pancheean incense kindles on the shrine ; Whiles they prepare the viands and the wine, 400 Cyrene spoke, now take carchesia twain, Libate we now Bacchus Maeonian Book IV. THE GEORGICS. Fountains and lakes of the Sun. Cran brook ) The Geranos, warred on the Pygmies, crossed the Euxine from Cerambus to the Krio Metopon of the Crimea, flew out of sight in the heavens, was garrulous, and trod down the corn-fields like a troop of horse. In Holy Writ the bird is cited twice ; once in Isaiah xxxviii. 14, " as a crane or a swallow so did I chatter," and Jeremiah viii. 7, " the crane and the swallow observe the time of coming." It is omitted amidst the clean and unclean birds in Deuteronomy. The Sis and the Agor are rendered the crane and the swallow, which Bochart disputes and reverses the translations. In the Metamorphoses of Ovid, Minerva depicts Gerana, Queen of the Pygmies, changed to the crane and compelled to war on her own people, and, in conjunction with that fable, Antigone changed to the white stork, who then commended herself with her chattering beak. Cerambus also was changed into a bird at the Deucalionic deluge. It is commonly supposed in England that we had a crane, now extinct, at least in these isles, which I imagine to be impossible, and that Cranmere on Dartmoor was called so from the cranes there congregating, but this is not so, there is nothing but desolation about Cranmere, and it is now the utter solitude it ever was and probably ever will be. Popular belief makes all the rivers of Dartmoor to rise from one central mere, called Cranmere, and old maps so depict them; but Cran is the Solar title attaching to the fountain NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. Ill source, and which in this case has only a fabulous existence ; and yet Cranmere so exemplifies the story of Grane and Janus, that I verily believe them to be the same. The Teign was a sacred river under the Druids — probably the word sig- nifies T'ain, the fountain source of the river — it has every species of Druidic paganism upon itself and tributaries — the Pixy parlour of Chudleigh Stone, the Dragon of Manaton and Bekky's Fall, and innumerable swarms of imaginary adders there, the cromlech called the Spinster's Rock, at Drew Stanton, and the Brad-mere there, which the peasant still dreads and avoids; it has logan stone, grey wethers, and circles, &c, &c, on Sittaford Tor, which the Teign surrounds. It has an old British bridge in its solitude, showing how much it was used in the processions to the Cranmere. Very near the source of the Teign occurs a mere called Ray barrow Pool, and though this is not Cranmere, yet it reflects the Re Bury, the Barrow of the Sun, in its name. But following from thence to the fountain head of the Teign, the story of Grane comes in as a complete exemplification of the mystery. She made her lovers go first, and disappeared from their eyes ; save of Janus, who saw behind ; and so the tourists search and look for Cranmere in vain. The Teign spreads its arm round Sittaford Tor, and from the summit morass the waters drain on either side, and the votary following the stream, returns to the main stream, where the circle is completed, and the Solar fountain remains hidden behind in its own mysterious source. As a Solar fountain it would have had blood rites, but wedded to Janus, and holding the hinge it became beneficent, and I suspect the blood rites were performed at Brad-mere and its enormous cromlech, whilst Cranmere was a fountain of grace and the summit of the Druidic votaries' aspirations in their processions. In Chamberlain's London, cranes are enumerated in the 112 NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. royal ordinance, King Edward II., settling the prices of edibles. The following birds, which might pass for the crane, are priced thus :— s. d. qrs. The best Goose 5 The best Wild Goose 4 Mallard 10 Heron 6 Coalune (Curlew) 3 Plover 10 Swan 3 Crane 3 and in the prices as really sold, they appear : — s. d. qrs. Goose 4 Mallard 12 Heron 6 Plover 10 Swan 3 Crane 10 but in this enumeration the bittern and the old bustard are omitted. In Landseer's Bolton Abbey, the two birds sent to the abbot are the heron and the bittern ; the bittern pecu- liarly possesses the resounding note attributed to the geranos. I imagine the crane here mentioned to signify the bittern. In mythology the heron, Ardea, rose from the burning mound of the city Ardea, and his cry is assigned to him in the Metamorph. xiv. 578. It appears to me that the bird of Apollo, the Geranos, is a compound of the migrating stork, the high-soaring heron, the booming bittern, and the " improbus " goose. That this latter bird was sacred we know from the Capitol of Rome, where it was kept as sacred ; it also figures with the hut of Baucis and Philemon, and their sole gander takes refuge beneath the feet of the gods, to whom that wedded pair were about to serve him as food. The roof Romulean " thatched with straw," and NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. 113 tho Argcntcns Anscr, which accompanies it as symbols of Rome, are duplicated in a cup from Cuzco, Peru, in which the same symbols are the ornaments of the cup, the thatched " tholum " or dome, and the goose, whilst Cuzco was almost a reduplication of the Cave of Cacus, in its filth, and human sacrifices, and permuted syllables ; and the Peruvian rite of drawing down fire from Heaven on the feast of Raymi, the marriage with Sisters, soror et uxor, and other points, show that they derived from the like source as the old Etrurian. Ca3sar says our British forefathers did not eat the goose, if so, it needs must have been sacred with them. The Grus Cinereus is the bird chosen by naturalists and draughtsmen to personate the Geranos. The Demoiselle still makes us periodic visits ; but these birds do not fulfil the requirements of Homer, vEsop, and Virgil's cranes. Virgil in this Book refers thrice to these birds, including those enu- merated above — " Strymonian cranes and villain geese." — I. Line 126. " Herons quit the marsh and wing their flight 'Midst clouds of Heaven." — I. Line 379. " When the white birds destroying snakes take wing." —II. Line 329. which last are interpreted to signify the stork, but which may also be the White Ibis. And lastly touching the Pygmies. Pyg is a radical word in mythology. The two Pygmalions, Adonis, Venus, and Hercules, all have this word amidst their titles, absurdly appropriated as Kallepygos and Melampygos ; but it was in the latter capacity that Hercides warred against the Cercopes, as Gerana warred against the Pygmies in virtue of some rivalry. There is a bas-relief in the British Museum showing Hercules carrying off two apes, I 114 NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. Cercopes, slung behind him, who with heads downwards are making discovery of his Melampygos. Upon the sphere of Denderah Orion is shown accompanied by some bird, which also sits on the sacred Tamarisk above the Tomb of Osiris. Wilk. Y. xxxv. " For He the Sire ordained it so to be." — Line 129. The unknown and the nameless God had seized upon many a thoughtful mind. At Dodona, God was the nameless God ; at Athens, we have the unknown God ; and Yirgil has in his iEneid, where Evander shows to iEneas the Mount Palatine — " (Quis Deus incertum est) habitat Dens," viii. 352. So also in the text Virgil follows the reverential manner of the Egyptians, and also of our own religion ; for when Moses asked for a name, Ex. iii. 14, he received a denial. Tlie Constellations. — Line 212. The Bonian Calendar was of no avail to the Eoman agricul- turist, so he went by the rising of the constellations. The difficulty in the Eoman adjustation of the year was that they had not our hours, minutes, and seconds, for a year consisting of 365 days, five hours, forty-eight minutes, eleven seconds, it was impossible for them without such measures to adjust their own. They counted by years, days, hours, and cycles. The year consisted of thirty-eight periods of eight days each, their nun- dinae or market-days, sacred to Saturn, closing each period, and which made only 304 days; but the cycle of six years restored it, made six of 304 days equal to five of ours of 365, which they kept further correct by intercalation of days, this state of things obtained until Caesar's time. The rising of the constellations is likewise a misleading rule followed through any length of time. Virgil opens his year NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. 115 with. Taurus golden-horned ; "but the precession of the Equi- noxes even then had passed into Aries, as Ovid apparently was aware of, for he states, Book x. 1. 80, Metamorph., Titan had the third time concluded the year with the " aequoreis " Pisces. We do the like ourselves. The Vernal Equinox has passed out of Aries, but we still begin our notion of the year with the Ram. " Tlie chesnut and the cesculus of Jove, And oak oracular of Grecian grove." Book II., line 1G. We are considerably at fault in our interpretation of some of the trees here mentioned — the fagus, the castanea, the arbutus, the palm, and probably the iEsculus. We have inter- preted too closely; arbute signifies all wild stocks, and not only the strawberry-tree, as malum signifies many sorts of fruit, and " castaneasque nuces," which Amaryllis loved, were not chesnuts which the pigs were munching at her gate, but, as we are taught, almonds, filberts, and walnuts. The fagus was the chesnut-tree ; the beech is not met with native below the Alps, while Ceesar has told us that the fagus did not grow in Britain The palm is the bay-laurel, as Phoebus said to Daphne : — " When public voice the Roman chiefs extol, Deck thou their triumph in the Capitol. Thou faithful guardian, on Augustus wait, Consort the sacred oak before his gate." And so in the Fasti, Book iv. 1. 952 : — " Laurel of Palatine, eternal be, And oak thy fellow sentinel, for three, Three gods inhabit here eternally." And Suetonius, amidst his tittle-tattle, writes that Augustus had a palm-tree sprung from beneath the pavement before his house, which he had transplanted to the canopy where stood I 2 116 NOTES TO THE GEOKGICS. the Penates. And that when Julius was at Munda in Spain, and his army was cutting down a wood to encamp, he com- manded them to leave a palm as an omen of victory ; from this tree sprung a shoot, which, in a few days, overshadowed the parent tree, and doves built in its "branches, albeit they are birds that shun hard and prickly leaves. In both which in- stances the Bay is meant. Bryant informs us, vol. 2, p. 12, that the branch of a palm- tree was called Bai in Egypt, and that Baia are used for palm branches by St. John, c. 12, v. 13, as also twice in Maccabees, in the plural Baion, and adds : — " As the palm-tree was sup- posed to be immortal, or at least, if it did die, to revive and enjoy a second life, the Egyptians gave the name of Bai to the soul." It occurred to me, visiting Lesness Abbey about the year 1835, that the gardener showed me a bay-tree which he said they had cut down and rooted up, but that it ever sprung up again, and added his opinion, that he thought there had been murder connected with it ; it is an instance of a like suppo- sition of the immortality of the bay existing amongst us as well as the Egyptians. We have next the fagus, i. e. the chesnut grafted and bear- ing the castaneas nuces, and we have the sesculus, supposed to be an oak, but we have no mention of the juglans, the gland of Jupiter, i. e. the walnut. The walnut is a tree in magnifi- cence and use nearly equal to the Chaonian oak itself. It is still the source of food in Greece, where I have purchased walnuts as food, and dined the cortege of guides with them. The absence of the juglans is inexplicable ; and I cannot help thinking that the assculus proper was the walnut, whilst iEscu- lian crowns are a generic, rather than especial, expression ; if so, the difficulty of discovering the edible acorn goes at once. If the walnut was not the sesculus, then the castanea must represent it, or it stands wholly omitted. NOTES TO THE GEOBGICS. 117 The sacrifice of the Goat to Bacchus, II., 1. 391. The derivation of Tragedy from the Tragos, as its first prize, is another instance of perversion. Tragedy derives its origin from the exarchon of the Dithyrambic Chorus, and lays claim to highest antiquity ; Comedy from the leader of the Phallic ; (Mure, III. p. 87.) The Taur — instance, Diana Taurica and the sacrifice of Iphi- geneia — was a grand and noble, though unholy phase of Pagan worship. The Chomah, with its dance, song, and Bacchanalian fes- tivity, was its reverse. The tone in which Virgil writes of these Bacchanalia is deeply apologetic. The pendant images deduce from the god Khem in Egypt ; whilst the Goat — Epep in Coptic, as Aphoph, Apaphus, &c, the Lord of the Taur, King, Seer, and Priest as he was, and Capricornus Dux Gregis, once the first sign of the Zodiac — is now the victim of his Bacchanalian successors. Virgil declares that the incoherent song deduced from Troy ; it was of foreign birth and parentage. The Tauric rites were the first secession of Paganism from the worship of the true God : the Bacchanalia were the last and the lowest into which Paganism could or did decline. The sacrifice of blood devolved into immorality and revelry. Comus and Encomium derive thence. (Mure, III. p. 111.) " And thou Great Pales." — Book III. 1. 1. The Pali may be traced back to the East and the earliest period; Batuta treats of the Pali Dynasty of Gwalior, and the Periplus treats of the King of Palibothra. The Pals reigned at Gwalior for eighty-four generations, when they left it to Earn Deo their viceroy, and seven Earns in succession, who were conquered by Shams Oddin and the white elephant ; but the Indian sphynx appears to have been the symbol of the Pal, who will return and devour the elephant, as his effigies in the 118 NOTES TO THE GEOEGICS. Asiatic researches shows him in the act of doing. The Pals built the Pagodas of Gwalior. From Palibothra in the East we trace them to Egypt in the Pallakides, and Philition the shepherd, who built the two pyramids of Gheeza, a race hated and detested and also calum- niated. Wilkinson, plate 82, gives one of the royal Pallades assisting the King in his fire-worship ; whilst old Phoenix, in the Iliad, informs us of his iniquity in marrying a Pallakis. Book ix. 449. We follow the shepherds to Palestina, and the Philistines ; where we find the fire-worship by foxes, as Samson punished the Philistines, and itself a Hetrurian rite preceding the Palilia of Pome, Yulpium Combustio in the Fasti of Ovid, Book iv. 706. We also find the Furies called PalEestinas deas in the Fasti, Book iv. 236. We have also the sulphurous pools of the Palici, and the pinguis uhi et placdbilis ara Palici, iEn. ix. 585, in precisely the words he applies iEn. vii. 764, pinguis uhi et placahilis ara Diance, whence I infer that it had not ever been so, but had so become like to the Diana Taurica, and which prepares us for the pro- pitious Pales and the Palilia, descending from the hated Phi- lition and the Pallacides. In their propitious phase they worshipped the dove — " alba Palcestino culta columba viro" Semiramis of Babylon was changed to a dove, and " sits on the white towers of Babel eternally," as is seen portrayed on the Barbarini pavement in Faber's Cabeiri;_;the race of the Semarim worshipped it on Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritan sect exists to this day, and Mount Gerizim is now called " Jebel el Tur," probably signifying Mountain of the Dove. The fire-rites are prominent. Ovid inaugurates the day by thrice leaping the flames of wisps of straw, and the peasantry conclude it by rolling and leaping midst the ashes of her bon- fires. But Mount Palatine had its rite of sacrifice of blood NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. 119 over Aventine and its sanctuary. Remus fell by the hand of Celer, and the Eemuria or Lemuria were appointed to soothe the shade. The Palladium was formed of the burnt bones of Pelops. Pallas was produced by the hammer of Yulcan from the head of Jupiter. Our own Falladurs, Bath and Shaftesbury, are named from fire-rites and not from Minerva. Tales was both male and female — " modo vir modo foemina Scytlion" a peculiarity of the gods of the Cuthasan shepherds. The Pali tongue ranked under the Turanian, conjoined with the Phoenician ; and the Pali inscriptions, like the Phoenician, are undecypherable. The Buddhist sacred lan- guage in Ceylon is Pali. Virgil was obliged to weed from the followers of iEneas both Palinurus and Pallas, local names to be accounted for, and eponymous of the old fire- worshippers. William of Malmesbury has imagined the discovery of the body of Pallas at Eome with an epitaph in modern Latin, but he adds : — " There was a burning lamp at his head, constructed by magical art, so that no violent blast nor dripping of water could extinguish it. "Whilst many were lost in admiration of this, one person — as there are always some persons expert in mischief— made an aperture beneath the flame with an iron style, which, introducing the air, the light vanished," — showing that in William of Malniesbury's day the name Pallas was akin to fire and flame. I deduce from these that the old Pali shepherds, fire-wor- shippers, and human sacrificers, devolved into the Eoman Pales ; and at the foundation of Eome at the Palilia, the blood of Eemus shed by Celer reflected the old sacrifices which had made them so hateful, that the Egyptian would not mention the names of the kings who built the pyramids, but called them after Philition the shepherd. 120 NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. " Startle the ivoods and banks of Tanager." — III., 1. 166. This I imagine to be a niythologic episode, to bring in Egypt and the myth of 16 and the Brize to Italy. Apophis the Shepherd king was a Tanite. Tzon, or Tzaan, signifying sheep, flocks, and cattle (Bryant, vi. 378). And the fane of Artemis Agria was at Bubastus, the denounced Phibeseth of the Scriptures. Silarus, now Selo or Sila, according to Servius (iEneid, 12, 1. 715, " mons et sylva"), a mountain and wood of Lucania. It seems to me to be the Sil Har — hill and grove of the Sun. Yirgil makes it famous for its fighting bulls : so the Boeotian Tanagra was famous for its fighting cocks (Bochart, i. c. 435). Also most likely some perversion.* The Silarus, Strabo says, was a petrifying river. Sela, says Bryant, was a place where there were fiery eruptions, and was a place dedicated to the Sun (vol. i. p. 39). We have our Tan Hill — Kybury Camp, on the Marlboro' Downs. It soars above Sil-buiy Hill. In our old vernacular Tan signified Fire, Re, the Sun. In Isaiah we have (xxx. 4) " his princes were at Zoan," rendered Tani both by Septuagint and Yulgate. III. 1. 252. " He and the foe unwary meet again" This distinctly has reference to the return of Caesar and flight of Pompey from Rorae, B.C. An. 50 — " Signa movet, prsecepsque oblituin fertur in hostem.'' So the " Pascitur in magna sylva forrnosa juvenca " was the Roman realm for which they fought. I have dropped the allegory in the translation. * Lord Brcmghton in his Albania says (p. 229), that Tanagra in Boeotia was under a hill called Corycius ; and he mentions Diana Agrsea in con- nexion with it. Bryant (ii. 188) adds that Orion's tomb was there. NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. 121 III. 1. 327. The Cinyps is brought in to grace the tale with another legend. It was a river which arose at the Hill of the Graces, and called beside, Zuch Abara, and Accabe. It was by the Triton in Africa, where Pallas Athena was born by Vulcan's blow from her Father's head. There is no sign of any river there now, says Eawlinson in Herodotus III. p. 152. III. 1. 426. The Onager. — I don't know what this signifies. There never were wild asses in Italy, and so far from being timid, wild asses are indomitable. Book IV. The bees of Aristaeus were the priestesses termed Melissas. Melitta or Melissa, says Bryant, III., p. 231, was no other than Damater, the supposed mother of mankind. She was the deity mentioned by Herodotus as enjoying with the Baby- lonians and Arabians joint honours with Dionusus. Bryant enumerates the following : — 1. The northern side of the Danube was occupied by bees. 2. The shepherd Comatas inclosed in an ark was nou- rished by bees. 3. Jove on Mount Ida was nourished by bees. 4. The Temple of Delphi was rebuilt by bees. They were, repeats Bryant, priests and priestesses of the ark, styled Seira, Theba, Selene, and Damater ; and that these were the persons who first cultivated the fruits of the earth, taught mankind agriculture, and weaned them from foul and unnatural repasts. In the Oracula Sibyllina, p. 241, it is stated that the cave of Trophonius was discovered by a swarm of bees ; the Consulti descended naked, or clad in white and purple vestments. 122 NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. In Holy Writ we have the Deborim. Deut. i. 44. " The Amorites chased you as bees do and destroyed you," &c. Ps. cxviii. 12. " They compassed rne about like bees." Is. vii. 18. " The Lord shall hiss for the bee in Assyria." The people here alluded to are the Deborim, to whom the prophetess Deborah appears to belong. She dwelt beneath Tamar, i.e. the Sanctuary of Baal Tamar, mentioned in Jud. xx. 33, conjoined with Baal Zebub, in Isaiah vii. 18. Buckingham, in his Travels, writes : — " We reached at noon the small village of Deborah, where we alighted to refresh, not suspecting that the treachery for which it is traditionally infamous in holy and in profane records, was still to be found at so distant a period." See art. " Jael;" Biblical Cyclopaedia. The chief star of Taurus is Aldebaran. Aldrovandus and Bochart III., p. 503, record that bees sprung from Taurs and wasps from Hippoi horses ; that the Melissas came from Taurs may be explained, that the fire Taur was their object of worship. The principle of blood and sacrifice involved in "Melas" black, got changed into honey, when those rites changed to sanctuary, and the white bulls became the symbols of Aristseus. Aristaeus was a fire-worshipper, son of Apollo. The Egyptian Apis was Abir, and Abir was a bull, whilst Apis is bee. The white bulls of Aristaeus, and the founding of the city Cyrene in his mother's name by him, although the fountain was sacred to the sun, and his presence in the sacred vale of Tempe, show that he was not the pagan Baal of fire and blood, but a sequent and benignant form of Baal. The Chevalier T. de Marigny, in his ' Circassia,' writes that " two names of their goddesses are still Melissa and Damater, slightly varied in orthography ; " and in connection therewith he writes of Tour'an and its fire- worshippers : and Tausch, on the Circassians, in the Asiatic Society's Journal, i. 107, makes NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. 123 the same remark, and adds that they have another who is patroness of bees, " Mercime, or the Mother of God. It is not known why she is so called, for her history has no connection with the title or the subject. Mercime is simply the patroness of bees." In like manner, as the Greeks turned the Melyttee into bees, they turned the race of the Ionim into doves, and have re- corded that Jupiter was fed by doves and changed into a dove, so likewise was Semiramis. Of these Grecian perversions, we may repeat — " Thy sin's not accidental, but a trade." With respect to the Cretan Ida, its conical peak towers over the rest of the isle, and the cavern, the Dsedalian labyrinth is six hundred feet above the plain ; a mountain cavern with a passage leading into the mountain, which diminishes sud- denly, and forces the votary to crawl (as at the Eamps in the pyramids, and the entrance to the cavern of New Grange on the Boyne), and at its termination a chamber with radii like a series of seven dials, one succeeding the other, there is water therein, and a large chamber of sacrifice ; its present name is Gotyna, but the Gortygian bulls have wholly disappeared, only goats remain in Crete. Scott's ' Egypt and Candia.' A similar peak, which is the centre of Majorca, is still called Toro. We might add to all this the myth of Pasi- phae and the Minotaur, which is another link of the bull, if not of the bee. Line 295, et seq. " Exiguus primurn atque ipsos contractus ad usus Eligitur locus : hunc angustique imbrice tecti Parietibusque premunt avctis : et quatuor addunt Quatuor a ventis obliqua luce fenestras." The Phoenician tongue recorded by Plautus reads as very good Irish, says Sir William Betham in his ' Gael and Cymbri,' 124 NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. and therein occurs the passage, " And grateful fires on stone towers will I ordain to blaze to Heaven," the stone tower being Lie Tor, and the Lie Tor is a Pyramis, — a Pyrarnis being, according to Plutarch, "the first of bodies," "the seminary or beginning of fire," and Pj thagoras also maintained, that of the pointed Pyramis was made fire. The stone tower of Ireland, in the words of Geraldus Cam- brensis, " quce, more jpatrice, arctce sunt et altce, necnon et rotundce" does singularly as Lie-tor, agree with the text of Virgil. The area of it is contracted to the smallest base, covered at the roof, and the four windows casting their light oblique on its area. The race to this day are fire-worshippers, and these doubtless their Pyratheia ; add to which that we find the Cabiric cavern at New Grange, and the mysteries the like as they were performed at Samothrace, if we may accept the pas- sage of Strabo (1. 4, c. 4, s. 6), and its application by Mr. Faber. The Bound Tower is by no means unique. It is found in India, as related in Moore's ' Ireland,' c. 2 ; and Mr. Dennis had discovered one on an Etruscan vase, the scene represented being the Boeotian Thebes. To connect the fire-tower still nearer with this story of Aristseus and Proteus. The tower of Torone, which stood near Pallene, was a fire- tower and a Pharos ; it was called the flaming Torone, and the country around Phlegra. There seems to have been a fire-tower named Proteus, who was married to Torone ; he was styled gloomy from the cruel rites practised in those places. They sacrificed strangers shipwrecked. Pallene was called, nurse of the giant-brood. Proteus fled by a subterra- nean passage from Pallene to Canopus on the Nile, from one Pharos to another. The Pharos of Egypt was both a watch- tower and a temple. Proteus was an Egyptian title of the deity, under which he was worshipped, both in the Pharos and at Memphis. The Grecians also made a Proetus out of NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. 125 this word; and his daughters or priestesses Prcetides were turned into cows. (See Bryant IT., p. 256, et seq.) I think it is self-evident that this chapter of Bryant's treats of the sub- ject which Virgil is recording in the 4th book from .1. 295. The Pumice Dome, 1. 395. This does not mean a dome of pumice rock, than which nothing could well be imagined more unsightly or at variance with the crystal dome of line 384. The huge domes and canopies, especially the dome of Caligula's Baths, were formed of the materials pumice and cement. I have bits of the pumice which have fallen which show no mark of age or injury, Although they have stood fifteen or sixteen centuries, they are as fresh as the day they were ejected from the volcanic craters of Lipari. " And with, twain taurine horns Eridanus," 1. 392. How the river Padus was first called the Eridanus is unknown. Herodotus says he will not admit the fact of such a river ; and Strabo also repudiates it for the Padus, as well as for the Eridanus of Athens, which was " outside the gate Dio- chares," for it needed an index to its whereabout. Pausanias thrust it on into Gaul. The fact is the original Erythraea was the Persian Gulf; and the region about Ormutz was probably that of the first sea-going vessels, which were called " Is ysaean steeds," It got constellated, and is shown as a reedy gulf and Canopus, which was also called " the horse " (Dean Yin- cent's ' Erythraean,' vol. ii. p. 208, 287), is at the bottom of it, from thence it travelled to the Egyptian Gulf and on to Cadiz, where it duplicated its legends of the Persian Gulf. From thence, in conjunction with the fall of Phaeton and the conversion of his sisters from Heliades, Priestesses of the Sun, into Lebanotides, or Priestesses of the Moon, — as Lebani 126 NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. poplar trees — it got assigned to the Padus, and evidently the Roinan poets were charmed with the legend, though their sages despised it, and nsed to ask derisively where were the chanting swans, the amber-weeping poplars, &c. We find that the fire-worshippers were wont to raise mounds at the parting of a stream ; such a one exists at the meeting of Tigris and Euphrates, and is called to this day Khorna, signifying horn. It had as synonyms Apameia, from being surrounded by water (Bochart, I. c. 83, 1. 43), and Koma, from its -mound. At the junction with the Eulseus there was a similar mound, which was thrice carried away by the flood, /.nd thrice reinstated. Loftus's ' Chaldsea,' p. 282. In the " Shield of Hercules," by Hesiod, all the nations of the world assembled to raise the mound of Cygnus ; but the river (Anaurus), the fount of fire, arose and indignantly swept it away, by command of Apollo, whose Delphic treasures had been raided by Cygnus. The Cuthite mound Aouris, as Cercasoura at the first parting of the Nile was apparently carried off by the river; the word aor signifying light, and so rendered in Is. xviii. 4 and xxvi. 19, a clear heat upon the aor ; and again, thy dew as the dew of the (aor) dawn. Jer. vii. Who is this coming up as an aor. Jer. viii. Egypt riseth up like an aor. Amos viii. 8. It shall rise up wholly as an aor, and it shall be cast out and drowned as the aor of Egypt, which is repeated in c ix. v. 5. Amos viii. 9. I will darken the earth in the aor. Now Cercasoura was a famous spot, but it was a mere fane and no town. Bryant vi. 160, seeks for it in vain as a town. At Rome we find Har Sil again as Hersilia, who, her coma (hair or mound) cut off, was deified as Ora. The words Karanim and Karanoth signify equally, horns and rays ; and Coma signifies equally the mound and hair. NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. 127 Thus arose the myth of Peleus vowing his hair to Spercheius. Pansanias, when he saw a statue of a boy offering his hair to the Cephissus remarks. " But that it was an ancient custom to cut off locks of their hair to rivers you may infer from the poesy of Homer, in which he relates that Peleus vowed his hair to the river Spercheius for the safe return of Achilles from Troy," c. 37. Taylor's Pausanias. So Arsinoe and Berenice vowed Chomahs, mounds, for their spouses, which have been rendered their locks of hair. Our own country is full of such mounds, but their antiquity is not recognized. The mound dates froin the rise of Paganism. At Babel it does not appear to have been unbenignant ; but the Typhonian mounds, having their origin from thence, were cursed with human slaughter. Another set of Ogygian mounds as those of Cycnus, of Alyattes in the lake Gygeea, and that made by Hercules with the aid of Minerva and the Trojans to save him from the marine Ketus (Iliad xx. 1. 145), were sur- rounded by waters, affording sanctuary. Under the first head we find instances in holy writ under the word Chomah (trans- lated wall). Baasha, king of the Moabites, sacrificed his eldest son on the Chomah of Kir Heres, and Saul's body was nailed to the Chomah of Beth Shan. Destruction by divine fire is announced against the Chomoth of Tyre, Gaza, Bozrah, Eabbah, and Damascus. In the East we read of the sacrifices to the goddess Kali on these mounds, on a scale of frightful mag- nitude ; and in the North, the like to Odin on his mounds — where Earl Hachon offered his son in sacrifice, and Aim, king of Sweden, his nine sons, and of a nine years' sacrifice offered by the Danes of 99 men ; whilst those to Kali consisted of 1008 human victims and 99 horses (Asiatic Journ. VII. 129). Like sacrifices were offered at Mexico on their Teocalli. Pairs of mounds were erected on rivers, which appear to have been sacrificial and called Taurs, translated Bulls ; such 128 NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. were those of Colclios, of Lemnos, &c. ; such were probably the two pyramids of Gheeza, the horned snake, the kerastis, which is the symbol of the builders upon their cartouches, probably symbolizes the Nile and its two fire mounds ; they were called Kerastse, and met with in Cyprus are condemned for the sacrifice of mortals. Ovid, Met. x. 223. Achelous had two horns, but the beneficent Hercules broke off one, and the other became a cornucopia, signifying that the sacrifice of blood being abrogated, the Pharos became the symbol of peace and plenty. There were the Bomoi On, or mounds of the Sun, in pairs, eternal subjects of jeer and ridicule. They were made asinine by the Greeks, and the ass's shadow at midday, when the mound affords none, Midas' Ears, and numerous absurd perversions as proverbs ; the Ass among the Kumaians, amongst the Bees, amongst the Monkeys, in ointment, — all form con- junctions of the mound of the Sun, with the Mount Meru, the Melissae, the Kumans, and the Pithecoi. And yet this harmless double fane probably had its rise from the origin of astronomy, when 5000 years ago the vernal passage of the Sun was through Gemini, whence they raised mounds of the On (or Sun) and passed betwixt their benignant fires. The Constellation descended perhaps as Onoi (Asses) was made Hoedi (kids), and thence changed into the Twins, whilst the Onoi became a lost constellation ; and whilst on the other hand, the passage betwixt the fires became in those rites which may be called Tauric, the means of human sacrifice. We have the dedication of mounds recorded as of dedicated hair, in the cases of Peleus, Arsinoe, and Berenice. The for- tified Phoenician Chomahs as the punicean locks of Nisus and of Pterelaus, betrayed by their daughters Scylla and Cometho. The Comata of Semiramis became mighty fortresses as Tyana, Aintaub or Hieracoma, and Aleppo. The ten Chomahs which mark the passage across the desert from Coptos to Berenice, NOTES TO THE GEOlUiHJS. 129 were considered as villages, of which the Grecian Kome is n synonym. Mounds are recorded on Promontories — as tombs of Elpenor, Palinurus, and Boewulf — and very probably as fire-towers dedicated to Poseidon, as was Polyphemus whose eye was put out by Ulysses. Ulysses, the Eponym of another set of mounds with crypts, of which that of Antiquiera, or Teba, perhaps the noblest cavern covered by its mound which exists, is recorded by Strabo, cap. IV. s. 3, as an Ulyssea ; and which fact accounts for the rivalry of Ulysses and the fiery mound of Polyphemus ; and over the wide world mounds have been sepulchral, and conjoined with groves and sanctuaries. These mounds are also called the tombs of the Amazons, at Troy and in Boeotia. Lastly, we have the diluvial theory of the Arkites in respect to many of these mounds, that they are mimic Mount Ararats, or rather Mount Baris ; of which our Mount Snowdon, Eryri, or Bryth, and the Tomen y Bala at Llanfair, at the mouth of the lake Bala, afford a case in point. " The sanctuary, which once floated on the wide lake, is now fixed on the margin." " There the sacred Ox is stationed to draw the shrine to dry ground." " There the dance is performed, and the priests move side- ways round the sanctuary." " There the Eagle waves aloft in the air, marking the path of Gran-Wyn," (the White Sun.) " Complete is my Cadyr in Caer Sidi, whilst the inundation of the copious fountain surrounds," &c. &c. Davies, British Druids, pp. 119, 171, 154. The goddess Ked, or Ceridwen, was the Keto of antiquity, p. 114, 122; she was daughter of the Patriarch Noah, 122, 126, 571; the Ark of Noah, 176; preserved Corn in the Deluge, 176; British Ceres, 368, 372, 402; her chief priest, K jf, ti-e-J> t?862- 130 NOTES TO THE GEORGICS. ^ and vassal — Coracles, symbol of the Ark, 230, 237 ; she was a Fury, a Giantess, a Botanist, First of Women, Goddess of Corn, Modeller of Youth, Buler of Bards, a Sailing Vessel, a Bird; she had her Cauldron and Sanctuary, and was wor- shipped conjointly with the Moon. Nine damsels tended her Cauldron, which split in twain, and poisoned the horses of Gwyddno, p. 214. She herself ejaculates—" My Chair, my Cauldron, my Laws, my Elo- quence ! " Such were the endowments and emblems which once attached to the Mount of Bala Lake, to Silbury Hill, and many other unnoticed mounds by our lakes and rivers. And to return to our subject, the Eridanus. From such mounds in the Persian Gulf, or from such legendary lore attaching generally to sacred rivers and streams, Eridanus and our own Father Thames, were crowned with twain Taurine horns. THE END. PRINTED BY AY. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, AND CHARIXG CROSS. ^^^y^vrU I "BXARYOF C ONCR ES s