Georgics

Virgil

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

  1. To care of sire the mother's care succeeds.
  2. When great with young they wander nigh their time,
  3. Let no man suffer them to drag the yoke
  4. In heavy wains, nor leap across the way,
  5. Nor scour the meads, nor swim the rushing flood.
  6. In lonely lawns they feed them, by the course
  7. Of brimming streams, where moss is, and the banks
  8. With grass are greenest, where are sheltering caves,
  9. And far outstretched the rock-flung shadow lies.
  10. Round wooded Silarus and the ilex-bowers
  11. Of green Alburnus swarms a winged pest—
  12. Its Roman name Asilus, by the Greeks
  13. Termed Oestros—fierce it is, and harshly hums,
  14. Driving whole herds in terror through the groves,
  15. Till heaven is madded by their bellowing din,
  16. And Tanager's dry bed and forest-banks.
  17. With this same scourge did Juno wreak of old
  18. The terrors of her wrath, a plague devised
  19. Against the heifer sprung from Inachus.
  20. From this too thou, since in the noontide heats
  21. 'Tis most persistent, fend thy teeming herds,
  22. And feed them when the sun is newly risen,
  23. Or the first stars are ushering in the night.