Georgics

Virgil

Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.

  1. But no whit the more
  2. For all expedients tried and travail borne
  3. By man and beast in turning oft the soil,
  4. Do greedy goose and Strymon-haunting cranes
  5. And succory's bitter fibres cease to harm,
  6. Or shade not injure. The great Sire himself
  7. No easy road to husbandry assigned,
  8. And first was he by human skill to rouse
  9. The slumbering glebe, whetting the minds of men
  10. With care on care, nor suffering realm of his
  11. In drowsy sloth to stagnate. Before Jove
  12. Fields knew no taming hand of husbandmen;
  13. To mark the plain or mete with boundary-line—
  14. Even this was impious; for the common stock
  15. They gathered, and the earth of her own will
  16. All things more freely, no man bidding, bore.
  17. He to black serpents gave their venom-bane,
  18. And bade the wolf go prowl, and ocean toss;
  19. Shooed from the leaves their honey, put fire away,
  20. And curbed the random rivers running wine,
  21. That use by gradual dint of thought on thought
  22. Might forge the various arts, with furrow's help
  23. The corn-blade win, and strike out hidden fire
  24. From the flint's heart. Then first the streams were ware
  25. Of hollowed alder-hulls: the sailor then
  26. Their names and numbers gave to star and star,
  27. Pleiads and Hyads, and Lycaon's child
  28. Bright Arctos; how with nooses then was found
  29. To catch wild beasts, and cozen them with lime,
  30. And hem with hounds the mighty forest-glades.
  31. Soon one with hand-net scourges the broad stream,
  32. Probing its depths, one drags his dripping toils
  33. Along the main; then iron's unbending might,
  34. And shrieking saw-blade,—for the men of old
  35. With wedges wont to cleave the splintering log;—
  36. Then divers arts arose; toil conquered all,
  37. Remorseless toil, and poverty's shrewd push
  38. In times of hardship. Ceres was the first
  39. Set mortals on with tools to turn the sod,
  40. When now the awful groves 'gan fail to bear
  41. Acorns and arbutes, and her wonted food
  42. Dodona gave no more. Soon, too, the corn
  43. Gat sorrow's increase, that an evil blight
  44. Ate up the stalks, and thistle reared his spines
  45. An idler in the fields; the crops die down;
  46. Upsprings instead a shaggy growth of burrs
  47. And caltrops; and amid the corn-fields trim
  48. Unfruitful darnel and wild oats have sway.
  49. Wherefore, unless thou shalt with ceaseless rake
  50. The weeds pursue, with shouting scare the birds,
  51. Prune with thy hook the dark field's matted shade,
  52. Pray down the showers, all vainly thou shalt eye,
  53. Alack! thy neighbour's heaped-up harvest-mow,
  54. And in the greenwood from a shaken oak
  55. Seek solace for thine hunger.