Complete Works of Virgil

by Virgil

  Feed, Tityrus, my goats, and, having fed,

  Drive to the drinking-pool, and, as you drive,

  Beware the he-goat; with his horn he butts.”

  MOERIS

  Ay, or to Varus that half-finished lay,

  “Varus, thy name, so still our Mantua live-

  Mantua to poor Cremona all too near-

  Shall singing swans bear upward to the stars.”

  LYCIDAS

  So may your swarms Cyrnean yew-trees shun,

  Your kine with cytisus their udders swell,

  Begin, if aught you have. The Muses made

  Me too a singer; I too have sung; the swains

  Call me a poet, but I believe them not:

  For naught of mine, or worthy Varius yet

  Or Cinna deem I, but account myself

  A cackling goose among melodious swans.

  MOERIS

  ’Twas in my thought to do so, Lycidas;

  Even now was I revolving silently

  If this I could recall- no paltry song:

  “Come, Galatea, what pleasure is ‘t to play

  Amid the waves? Here glows the Spring, here earth

  Beside the streams pours forth a thousand flowers;

  Here the white poplar bends above the cave,

  And the lithe vine weaves shadowy covert: come,

  Leave the mad waves to beat upon the shore.”

  LYCIDAS

  What of the strain I heard you singing once

  On a clear night alone? the notes I still

  Remember, could I but recall the words.

  MOERIS

  “Why, Daphnis, upward gazing, do you mark

  The ancient risings of the Signs? for look

  Where Dionean Caesar’s star comes forth

  In heaven, to gladden all the fields with corn,

  And to the grape upon the sunny slopes

  Her colour bring! Now, the pears;

  So shall your children’s children pluck their fruit.

  Time carries all things, even our wits, away.

  Oft, as a boy, I sang the sun to rest,

  But all those songs are from my memory fled,

  And even his voice is failing Moeris now;

  The wolves eyed Moeris first: but at your wish

  Menalcas will repeat them oft enow.

  LYCIDAS

  Your pleas but linger out my heart’s desire:

  Now all the deep is into silence hushed,

  And all the murmuring breezes sunk to sleep.

  We are half-way thither, for Bianor’s tomb

  Begins to show: here, Moeris, where the hinds

  Are lopping the thick leafage, let us sing.

  Set down the kids, yet shall we reach the town;

  Or, if we fear the night may gather rain

  Ere we arrive, then singing let us go,

  Our way to lighten; and, that we may thus

  Go singing, I will case you of this load.

  MOERIS

  Cease, boy, and get we to the work in hand:

  We shall sing better when himself is come.

  ECLOGUE X

  GALLUS

  This now, the very latest of my toils,

  Vouchsafe me, Arethusa! needs must I

  Sing a brief song to Gallus- brief, but yet

  Such as Lycoris’ self may fitly read.

  Who would not sing for Gallus? So, when thou

  Beneath Sicanian billows glidest on,

  May Doris blend no bitter wave with thine,

  Begin! The love of Gallus be our theme,

  And the shrewd pangs he suffered, while, hard by,

  The flat-nosed she-goats browse the tender brush.

  We sing not to deaf ears; no word of ours

  But the woods echo it. What groves or lawns

  Held you, ye Dryad-maidens, when for love-

  Love all unworthy of a loss so dear-

  Gallus lay dying? for neither did the slopes

  Of Pindus or Parnassus stay you then,

  No, nor Aonian Aganippe. Him

  Even the laurels and the tamarisks wept;

  For him, outstretched beneath a lonely rock,

  Wept pine-clad Maenalus, and the flinty crags

  Of cold Lycaeus. The sheep too stood around-

  Of us they feel no shame, poet divine;

  Nor of the flock be thou ashamed: even fair

  Adonis by the rivers fed his sheep-

  Came shepherd too, and swine-herd footing slow,

  And, from the winter-acorns dripping-wet

  Menalcas. All with one accord exclaim:

  “From whence this love of thine?” Apollo came;

  “Gallus, art mad?” he cried, “thy bosom’s care

  Another love is following.”Therewithal

  Silvanus came, with rural honours crowned;

  The flowering fennels and tall lilies shook

  Before him. Yea, and our own eyes beheld

  Pan, god of Arcady, with blood-red juice

  Of the elder-berry, and with vermilion, dyed.

  “Wilt ever make an end?” quoth he, “behold

  Love recks not aught of it: his heart no more

  With tears is sated than with streams the grass,

  Bees with the cytisus, or goats with leaves.”

  “Yet will ye sing, Arcadians, of my woes

  Upon your mountains,” sadly he replied-

  “Arcadians, that alone have skill to sing.

  O then how softly would my ashes rest,

  If of my love, one day, your flutes should tell!

  And would that I, of your own fellowship,

  Or dresser of the ripening grape had been,

  Or guardian of the flock! for surely then,

  Let Phyllis, or Amyntas, or who else,

  Bewitch me- what if swart Amyntas be?

  Dark is the violet, dark the hyacinth-

  Among the willows, ‘neath the limber vine,

  Reclining would my love have lain with me,

  Phyllis plucked garlands, or Amyntas sung.

  Here are cool springs, soft mead and grove, Lycoris;

  Here might our lives with time have worn away.

  But me mad love of the stern war-god holds

  Armed amid weapons and opposing foes.

  Whilst thou- Ah! might I but believe it not!-

  Alone without me, and from home afar,

  Look’st upon Alpine snows and frozen Rhine.

  Ah! may the frost not hurt thee, may the sharp

  And jagged ice not wound thy tender feet!

  I will depart, re-tune the songs I framed

  In verse Chalcidian to the oaten reed

  Of the Sicilian swain. Resolved am I

  In the woods, rather, with wild beasts to couch,

  And bear my doom, and character my love

  Upon the tender tree-trunks: they will grow,

  And you, my love, grow with them. And meanwhile

  I with the Nymphs will haunt Mount Maenalus,

  Or hunt the keen wild boar. No frost so cold

  But I will hem with hounds thy forest-glades,

  Parthenius. Even now, methinks, I range

  O’er rocks, through echoing groves, and joy to launch

  Cydonian arrows from a Parthian bow.-

  As if my madness could find healing thus,

  Or that god soften at a mortal’s grief!

  Now neither Hamadryads, no, nor songs

  Delight me more: ye woods, away with you!

  No pangs of ours can change him; not though we

  In the mid-frost should drink of Hebrus’ stream,

  And in wet winters face Sithonian snows,

  Or, when the bark of the tall elm-tree bole

  Of drought is dying, should, under Cancer’s Sign,

  In Aethiopian deserts drive our flocks.

  Love conquers all things; yield we too to love!”

  These songs, Pierian Maids, shall it suffice

  Your poet
to have sung, the while he sat,

  And of slim mallow wove a basket fine:

  To Gallus ye will magnify their worth,

  Gallus, for whom my love grows hour by hour,

  As the green alder shoots in early Spring.

  Come, let us rise: the shade is wont to be

  Baneful to singers; baneful is the shade

  Cast by the juniper, crops sicken too

  In shade. Now homeward, having fed your fill —

  Eve’s star is rising-go, my she-goats, go.

  THE GEORGICS

  The Georgics is a poem of four books, published circa 29 BC. The poem draws on various sources and has influenced many later poets from antiquity to the present day. Georgics refers to the Greek word georgein ‘to farm’ and one of the main subjects of the poem is agriculture. Yet the collection is not an example of peaceful rural poetry, but instead characterised by tensions in both theme and purpose. Composed from 37–29 BC, The Georgics is a didactic hexameter poem, which Virgil dedicated to his famous patron Maecenas. The poem gives instruction in the methods of running a farm, as Virgil follows in the didactic tradition of the Greek poet Hesiod, whose Works and Days is an evident model of the work.

  Tityrus Meets Meliboeus by Servius, 1469

  THE GEORGICS – Greenough’s Translation

  J. B. Greenough, an American classicist, published this much respected translation of The Georgics in 1900.

  Late-17th-century illustration of a passage from the Georgics by Jerzy Siemiginowski-Eleuter

  CONTENTS

  GEORGIC I

  GEORGIC II

  GEORGIC III

  GEORGIC IV

  GEORGIC I

  What makes the cornfield smile; beneath what star

  Maecenas, it is meet to turn the sod

  Or marry elm with vine; how tend the steer;

  What pains for cattle-keeping, or what proof

  Of patient trial serves for thrifty bees;-

  Such are my themes.

  O universal lights

  Most glorious! ye that lead the gliding year

  Along the sky, Liber and Ceres mild,

  If by your bounty holpen earth once changed

  Chaonian acorn for the plump wheat-ear,

  And mingled with the grape, your new-found gift,

  The draughts of Achelous; and ye Fauns

  To rustics ever kind, come foot it, Fauns

  And Dryad-maids together; your gifts I sing.

  And thou, for whose delight the war-horse first

  Sprang from earth’s womb at thy great trident’s stroke,

  Neptune; and haunter of the groves, for whom

  Three hundred snow-white heifers browse the brakes,

  The fertile brakes of Ceos; and clothed in power,

  Thy native forest and Lycean lawns,

  Pan, shepherd-god, forsaking, as the love

  Of thine own Maenalus constrains thee, hear

  And help, O lord of Tegea! And thou, too,

  Minerva, from whose hand the olive sprung;

  And boy-discoverer of the curved plough;

  And, bearing a young cypress root-uptorn,

  Silvanus, and Gods all and Goddesses,

  Who make the fields your care, both ye who nurse

  The tender unsown increase, and from heaven

  Shed on man’s sowing the riches of your rain:

  And thou, even thou, of whom we know not yet

  What mansion of the skies shall hold thee soon,

  Whether to watch o’er cities be thy will,

  Great Caesar, and to take the earth in charge,

  That so the mighty world may welcome thee

  Lord of her increase, master of her times,

  Binding thy mother’s myrtle round thy brow,

  Or as the boundless ocean’s God thou come,

  Sole dread of seamen, till far Thule bow

  Before thee, and Tethys win thee to her son

  With all her waves for dower; or as a star

  Lend thy fresh beams our lagging months to cheer,

  Where ‘twixt the Maid and those pursuing Claws

  A space is opening; see! red Scorpio’s self

  His arms draws in, yea, and hath left thee more

  Than thy full meed of heaven: be what thou wilt-

  For neither Tartarus hopes to call thee king,

  Nor may so dire a lust of sovereignty

  E’er light upon thee, howso Greece admire

  Elysium’s fields, and Proserpine not heed

  Her mother’s voice entreating to return-

  Vouchsafe a prosperous voyage, and smile on this

  My bold endeavour, and pitying, even as I,

  These poor way-wildered swains, at once begin,

  Grow timely used unto the voice of prayer.

  In early spring-tide, when the icy drip

  Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr’s breath

  Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then ’tis time;

  Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox,

  And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine.

  That land the craving farmer’s prayer fulfils,

  Which twice the sunshine, twice the frost has felt;

  Ay, that’s the land whose boundless harvest-crops

  Burst, see! the barns.

  But ere our metal cleave

  An unknown surface, heed we to forelearn

  The winds and varying temper of the sky,

  The lineal tilth and habits of the spot,

  What every region yields, and what denies.

  Here blithelier springs the corn, and here the grape,

  There earth is green with tender growth of trees

  And grass unbidden. See how from Tmolus comes

  The saffron’s fragrance, ivory from Ind,

  From Saba’s weakling sons their frankincense,

  Iron from the naked Chalybs, castor rank

  From Pontus, from Epirus the prize-palms

  O’ the mares of Elis.

  Such the eternal bond

  And such the laws by Nature’s hand imposed

  On clime and clime, e’er since the primal dawn

  When old Deucalion on the unpeopled earth

  Cast stones, whence men, a flinty race, were reared.

  Up then! if fat the soil, let sturdy bulls

  Upturn it from the year’s first opening months,

  And let the clods lie bare till baked to dust

  By the ripe suns of summer; but if the earth

  Less fruitful just ere Arcturus rise

  With shallower trench uptilt it- ‘twill suffice;

  There, lest weeds choke the crop’s luxuriance, here,

  Lest the scant moisture fail the barren sand.

  Then thou shalt suffer in alternate years

  The new-reaped fields to rest, and on the plain

  A crust of sloth to harden; or, when stars

  Are changed in heaven, there sow the golden grain

  Where erst, luxuriant with its quivering pod,

  Pulse, or the slender vetch-crop, thou hast cleared,

  And lupin sour, whose brittle stalks arise,

  A hurtling forest. For the plain is parched

  By flax-crop, parched by oats, by poppies parched

  In Lethe-slumber drenched. Nathless by change

  The travailing earth is lightened, but stint not

  With refuse rich to soak the thirsty soil,

  And shower foul ashes o’er the exhausted fields.

  Thus by rotation like repose is gained,

  Nor earth meanwhile uneared and thankless left.

  Oft, too, ‘twill boot to fire the naked fields,

  And the light stubble burn with crackling flames;

  Whether that earth therefrom some hidden strength

  And fattening food derives, or that the fire

  Bakes every blemish out, and sweats away

  Each useless humour, or that the heat unlocks

 
New passages and secret pores, whereby

  Their life-juice to the tender blades may win;

  Or that it hardens more and helps to bind

  The gaping veins, lest penetrating showers,

  Or fierce sun’s ravening might, or searching blast

  Of the keen north should sear them. Well, I wot,

  He serves the fields who with his harrow breaks

  The sluggish clods, and hurdles osier-twined

  Hales o’er them; from the far Olympian height

  Him golden Ceres not in vain regards;

  And he, who having ploughed the fallow plain

  And heaved its furrowy ridges, turns once more

  Cross-wise his shattering share, with stroke on stroke

  The earth assails, and makes the field his thrall.

  Pray for wet summers and for winters fine,

  Ye husbandmen; in winter’s dust the crops

  Exceedingly rejoice, the field hath joy;

  No tilth makes Mysia lift her head so high,

  Nor Gargarus his own harvests so admire.

  Why tell of him, who, having launched his seed,

  Sets on for close encounter, and rakes smooth

  The dry dust hillocks, then on the tender corn

  Lets in the flood, whose waters follow fain;

  And when the parched field quivers, and all the blades

  Are dying, from the brow of its hill-bed,

  See! see! he lures the runnel; down it falls,

  Waking hoarse murmurs o’er the polished stones,

  And with its bubblings slakes the thirsty fields?

  Or why of him, who lest the heavy ears

  O’erweigh the stalk, while yet in tender blade

  Feeds down the crop’s luxuriance, when its growth

  First tops the furrows? Why of him who drains

  The marsh-land’s gathered ooze through soaking sand,

  Chiefly what time in treacherous moons a stream

  Goes out in spate, and with its coat of slime

  Holds all the country, whence the hollow dykes

  Sweat steaming vapour?

  But no whit the more

  For all expedients tried and travail borne

  By man and beast in turning oft the soil,

  Do greedy goose and Strymon-haunting cranes

  And succory’s bitter fibres cease to harm,

  Or shade not injure. The great Sire himself

  No easy road to husbandry assigned,

  And first was he by human skill to rouse

  The slumbering glebe, whetting the minds of men

  With care on care, nor suffering realm of his