Georgics

Virgil

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

  1. Now for the native gifts of various soils,
  2. What powers hath each, what hue, what natural bent
  3. For yielding increase. First your stubborn lands
  4. And churlish hill-sides, where are thorny fields
  5. Of meagre marl and gravel, these delight
  6. In long-lived olive-groves to Pallas dear.
  7. Take for a sign the plenteous growth hard by
  8. Of oleaster, and the fields strewn wide
  9. With woodland berries. But a soil that's rich,
  10. In moisture sweet exulting, and the plain
  11. That teems with grasses on its fruitful breast,
  12. Such as full oft in hollow mountain-dell
  13. We view beneath us—from the craggy heights
  14. Streams thither flow with fertilizing mud—
  15. A plain which southward rising feeds the fern
  16. By curved ploughs detested, this one day
  17. Shall yield thee store of vines full strong to gush
  18. In torrents of the wine-god; this shall be
  19. Fruitful of grapes and flowing juice like that
  20. We pour to heaven from bowls of gold, what time
  21. The sleek Etruscan at the altar blows
  22. His ivory pipe, and on the curved dish
  23. We lay the reeking entrails. If to rear
  24. Cattle delight thee rather, steers, or lambs,
  25. Or goats that kill the tender plants, then seek
  26. Full-fed Tarentum's glades and distant fields,
  27. Or such a plain as luckless Mantua lost
  28. Whose weedy water feeds the snow-white swan:
  29. There nor clear springs nor grass the flocks will fail,
  30. And all the day-long browsing of thy herds
  31. Shall the cool dews of one brief night repair.
  32. Land which the burrowing share shows dark and rich,
  33. With crumbling soil—for this we counterfeit
  34. In ploughing—for corn is goodliest; from no field
  35. More wains thou'lt see wend home with plodding steers;
  36. Or that from which the husbandman in spleen
  37. Has cleared the timber, and o'erthrown the copse
  38. That year on year lay idle, and from the roots
  39. Uptorn the immemorial haunt of birds;
  40. They banished from their nests have sought the skies;
  41. But the rude plain beneath the ploughshare's stroke
  42. Starts into sudden brightness. For indeed
  43. The starved hill-country gravel scarce serves the bees
  44. With lowly cassias and with rosemary;
  45. Rough tufa and chalk too, by black water-worms
  46. Gnawed through and through, proclaim no soils beside
  47. So rife with serpent-dainties, or that yield
  48. Such winding lairs to lurk in. That again,
  49. Which vapoury mist and flitting smoke exhales,
  50. Drinks moisture up and casts it forth at will,
  51. Which, ever in its own green grass arrayed,
  52. Mars not the metal with salt scurf of rust—
  53. That shall thine elms with merry vines enwreathe;
  54. That teems with olive; that shall thy tilth prove kind
  55. To cattle, and patient of the curved share.
  56. Such ploughs rich Capua, such the coast that skirts
  57. Thy ridge, Vesuvius, and the Clanian flood,
  58. Acerrae's desolation and her bane.
  1. How each to recognize now hear me tell.
  2. Dost ask if loose or passing firm it be—
  3. Since one for corn hath liking, one for wine,
  4. The firmer sort for Ceres, none too loose
  5. For thee, Lyaeus?—with scrutinizing eye
  6. First choose thy ground, and bid a pit be sunk
  7. Deep in the solid earth, then cast the mould
  8. All back again, and stamp the surface smooth.
  9. If it suffice not, loose will be the land,
  10. More meet for cattle and for kindly vines;
  11. But if, rebellious, to its proper bounds
  12. The soil returns not, but fills all the trench
  13. And overtops it, then the glebe is gross;
  14. Look for stiff ridges and reluctant clods,
  15. And with strong bullocks cleave the fallow crust.
  16. Salt ground again, and bitter, as 'tis called—
  17. Barren for fruits, by tilth untamable,
  18. Nor grape her kind, nor apples their good name
  19. Maintaining—will in this wise yield thee proof:
  20. Stout osier-baskets from the rafter-smoke,
  21. And strainers of the winepress pluck thee down;
  22. Hereinto let that evil land, with fresh
  23. Spring-water mixed, be trampled to the full;
  24. The moisture, mark you, will ooze all away,
  25. In big drops issuing through the osier-withes,
  26. But plainly will its taste the secret tell,
  27. And with a harsh twang ruefully distort
  28. The mouths of them that try it. Rich soil again
  29. We learn on this wise: tossed from hand to hand
  30. Yet cracks it never, but pitch-like, as we hold,
  31. Clings to the fingers. A land with moisture rife
  32. Breeds lustier herbage, and is more than meet
  33. Prolific. Ah I may never such for me
  34. O'er-fertile prove, or make too stout a show
  35. At the first earing! Heavy land or light
  36. The mute self-witness of its weight betrays.
  37. A glance will serve to warn thee which is black,
  38. Or what the hue of any. But hard it is
  39. To track the signs of that pernicious cold:
  40. Pines only, noxious yews, and ivies dark
  41. At times reveal its traces.