Georgics

Curb in the running waters, there was he / Plucking the rathe faint hyacinth, while he chid / Summer's slow footsteps and the lagging West. / Therefore he too with earliest brooding bees / And their full swarms o'erflowed, and first was he / To press the bubbling honey from the comb; / Lime-trees were his, and many a branching pine; / And all the fruits wherewith in early bloom / The orchard-tree had clothed her, in full tale / Hung there, by mellowing autumn perfected. / He too transplanted tall-grown elms a-row, / Time-toughened pear, thorns bursting with the plum / And plane now yielding serviceable shade / For dry lips to drink under: but these things, / Shut off by rigorous limits, I pass by, / And leave for others to sing after me.

Come, then, I will unfold the natural powers / Great Jove himself upon the bees bestowed, / The boon for which, led by the shrill sweet strains / Of the Curetes and their clashing brass, / They fed the King of heaven in Dicte's cave. / Alone of all things they receive and hold / Community of offspring, and they house / Together in one city, and beneath / The shelter of majestic laws they live; / And they alone fixed home and country know, / And in the summer, warned of coming cold, / Make proof of toil, and for the general store / Hoard up their gathered harvesting. For some / Watch o'er the victualling of the hive, and these / By settled order ply their tasks afield; / And some within the confines of their home / Plant firm the comb's first layer, Narcissus' tear, / And sticky gum oozed from the bark of trees, / Then set the clinging wax to hang therefrom. / Others the while lead forth the full-grown young, / Their country's hope, and others press and pack / The thrice repured honey, and stretch their cells / To bursting with the clear-strained nectar sweet. / Some, too, the wardship of the gates befalls, / Who watch in turn for showers and cloudy skies, / Or ease returning labourers of their load, / Or form a band and from their precincts drive / The drones, a lazy herd. How glows the work! / How sweet the honey smells of perfumed thyme / Like the Cyclopes, when in haste they forge

From the slow-yielding ore the thunderbolts, / Some from the bull's-hide bellows in and out / Let the blasts drive, some dip i' the water-trough / The sputtering metal: with the anvil's weight / Groans Etna: they alternately in time / With giant strength uplift their sinewy arms, / Or twist the iron with the forceps' grip- / Not otherwise, to measure small with great, / The love of getting planted in their breasts / Goads on the bees, that haunt old Cecrops' heights, / Each in his sphere to labour. The old have charge / To keep the town, and build the walled combs, / And mould the cunning chambers; but the youth, / Their tired legs packed with thyme, come labouring home / Belated, for afar they range to feed / On arbutes and the grey-green willow-leaves, / And cassia and the crocus blushing red, / Glue-yielding limes, and hyacinths dusky-eyed. / One hour for rest have all, and one for toil: / With dawn they hurry from the gates- no room / For loiterers there: and once again, when even / Now bids them quit their pasturing on the plain, / Then homeward make they, then refresh their strength: / A hum arises: hark! they buzz and buzz / About the doors and threshold; till at length / Safe laid to rest they hush them for the night, / And welcome slumber laps their weary limbs. / But from the homestead not too far they fare, / When showers hang like to fall, nor, east winds nigh, / Confide in heaven, but 'neath the city walls

Safe-circling fetch them water, or essay / Brief out-goings, and oft weigh-up tiny stones, / As light craft ballast in the tossing tide, / Wherewith they poise them through the cloudy vast. / This law of life, too, by the bees obeyed, / Will move thy wonder, that nor sex with sex / Yoke they in marriage, nor yield their limbs to love, / Nor know the pangs of labour, but alone / From leaves and honied herbs, the mothers, each, / Gather their offspring in their mouths, alone / Supply new kings and pigmy commonwealth, / And their old court and waxen realm repair. / Oft, too, while wandering, against jagged stones / Their wings they fray, and 'neath the burden yield / Their liberal lives: so deep their love of flowers, / So glorious deem they honey's proud acquist. / Therefore, though each a life of narrow span, / Ne'er stretched to summers more than seven, befalls, / Yet deathless doth the race endure, and still / Perennial stands the fortune of their line, / From grandsire unto grandsire backward told. / Moreover, not Aegyptus, nor the realm / Of boundless Lydia, no, nor Parthia's hordes, / Nor Median Hydaspes, to their king / Do such obeisance: lives the king unscathed, / One will inspires the million: is he dead, / Snapt is the bond of fealty; they themselves / Ravage their toil-wrought honey, and rend amain / Their own comb's waxen trellis. He is the lord / Of all their labour; him with awful eye

They reverence, and with murmuring throngs surround, / In crowds attend, oft shoulder him on high, / Or with their bodies shield him in the fight, / And seek through showering wounds a glorious death. / Led by these tokens, and with such traits to guide, / Some say that unto bees a share is given / Of the Divine Intelligence, and to drink / Pure draughts of ether; for God permeates all- / Earth, and wide ocean, and the vault of heaven- / From whom flocks, herds, men, beasts of every kind, / Draw each at birth the fine essential flame; / Yea, and that all things hence to Him return, / Brought back by dissolution, nor can death / Find place: but, each into his starry rank, / Alive they soar, and mount the heights of heaven.

If now their narrow home thou wouldst unseal, / And broach the treasures of the honey-house, / With draught of water first toment thy lips, / And spread before thee fumes of trailing smoke. / Twice is the teeming produce gathered in, / Twofold their time of harvest year by year, / Once when Taygete the Pleiad uplifts / Her comely forehead for the earth to see, / With foot of scorn spurning the ocean-streams, / Once when in gloom she flies the watery Fish, / And dips from heaven into the wintry wave. / Unbounded then their wrath; if hurt, they breathe / Venom into their bite, cleave to the veins / And let the sting lie buried, and leave their lives / Behind them in the wound. But if you dread / Too rigorous a winter, and would fain / Temper the coming time, and their bruised hearts / And broken estate to pity move thy soul, / Yet who would fear to fumigate with thyme, / Or cut the empty wax away? for oft / Into their comb the newt has gnawed unseen, / And the light-loathing beetles crammed their bed, / And he that sits at others' board to feast, / The do-naught drone; or 'gainst the unequal foe / Swoops the fierce hornet, or the moth's fell tribe; / Or spider, victim of Minerva's spite, / Athwart the doorway hangs her swaying net. / The more impoverished they, the keenlier all / To mend the fallen fortunes of their race / Will nerve them, fill the cells up, tier on tier,

And weave their granaries from the rifled flowers. / Now, seeing that life doth even to bee-folk bring / Our human chances, if in dire disease / Their bodies' strength should languish- which anon / By no uncertain tokens may be told- / Forthwith the sick change hue; grim leanness mars / Their visage; then from out the cells they bear / Forms reft of light, and lead the mournful pomp; / Or foot to foot about the porch they hang, / Or within closed doors loiter, listless all / From famine, and benumbed with shrivelling cold. / Then is a deep note heard, a long-drawn hum, / As when the chill South through the forests sighs, / As when the troubled ocean hoarsely booms / With back-swung billow, as ravening tide of fire / Surges, shut fast within the furnace-walls. / Then do I bid burn scented galbanum, / And, honey-streams through reeden troughs instilled, / Challenge and cheer their flagging appetite / To taste the well-known food; and it shall boot / To mix therewith the savour bruised from gall, / And rose-leaves dried, or must to thickness boiled / By a fierce fire, or juice of raisin-grapes / From Psithian vine, and with its bitter smell / Centaury, and the famed Cecropian thyme. / There is a meadow-flower by country folk / Hight star-wort; 'tis a plant not far to seek; / For from one sod an ample growth it rears, / Itself all golden, but girt with plenteous leaves, / Where glory of purple shines through violet gloom.

With chaplets woven hereof full oft are decked / Heaven's altars: harsh its taste upon the tongue; / Shepherds in vales smooth-shorn of nibbling flocks / By Mella's winding waters gather it. / The roots of this, well seethed in fragrant wine, / Set in brimmed baskets at their doors for food. / But if one's whole stock fail him at a stroke, / Nor hath he whence to breed the race anew, / 'Tis time the wondrous secret to disclose / Taught by the swain of Arcady, even how / The blood of slaughtered bullocks oft has borne / Bees from corruption. I will trace me back / To its prime source the story's tangled thread, / And thence unravel. For where thy happy folk, / Canopus, city of Pellaean fame, / Dwell by the Nile's lagoon-like overflow, / And high o'er furrows they have called their own / Skim in their painted wherries; where, hard by, / The quivered Persian presses, and that flood / Which from the swart-skinned Aethiop bears him down, / Swift-parted into sevenfold branching mouths / With black mud fattens and makes Aegypt green, / That whole domain its welfare's hope secure / Rests on this art alone. And first is chosen / A strait recess, cramped closer to this end, / Which next with narrow roof of tiles atop / 'Twixt prisoning walls they pinch, and add hereto / From the four winds four slanting window-slits. / Then seek they from the herd a steer, whose horns / With two years' growth are curling, and stop fast,

Plunge madly as he may, the panting mouth / And nostrils twain, and done with blows to death, / Batter his flesh to pulp i' the hide yet whole, / And shut the doors, and leave him there to lie. / But 'neath his ribs they scatter broken boughs, / With thyme and fresh-pulled cassias: this is done / When first the west winds bid the waters flow, / Ere flush the meadows with new tints, and ere / The twittering swallow buildeth from the beams. / Meanwhile the juice within his softened bones / Heats and ferments, and things of wondrous birth, / Footless at first, anon with feet and wings, / Swarm there and buzz, a marvel to behold; / And more and more the fleeting breeze they take, / Till, like a shower that pours from summer-clouds, / Forth burst they, or like shafts from quivering string / When Parthia's flying hosts provoke the fray.

Say what was he, what God, that fashioned forth / This art for us, O Muses? of man's skill / Whence came the new adventure? From thy vale, / Peneian Tempe, turning, bee-bereft, / So runs the tale, by famine and disease, / Mournful the shepherd Aristaeus stood / Fast by the haunted river-head, and thus / With many a plaint to her that bare him cried: / "Mother, Cyrene, mother, who hast thy home / Beneath this whirling flood, if he thou sayest, / Apollo, lord of Thymbra, be my sire, / Sprung from the Gods' high line, why barest thou me / With fortune's ban for birthright? Where is now / Thy love to me-ward banished from thy breast? / O! wherefore didst thou bid me hope for heaven? / Lo! even the crown of this poor mortal life, / Which all my skilful care by field and fold, / No art neglected, scarce had fashioned forth, / Even this falls from me, yet thou call'st me son. / Nay, then, arise! With thine own hands pluck up / My fruit-plantations: on the homestead fling / Pitiless fire; make havoc of my crops; / Burn the young plants, and wield the stubborn axe / Against my vines, if there hath taken the / Such loathing of my greatness." But that cry, / Even from her chamber in the river-deeps, / His mother heard: around her spun the nymphs / Milesian wool stained through with hyaline dye, / Drymo, Xantho, Ligea, Phyllodoce, / Their glossy locks o'er snowy shoulders shed,

Cydippe and Lycorias yellow-haired, / A maiden one, one newly learned even then / To bear Lucina's birth-pang. Clio, too, / And Beroe, sisters, ocean-children both, / Both zoned with gold and girt with dappled fell, / Ephyre and Opis, and from Asian meads / Deiopea, and, bow at length laid by, / Fleet-footed Arethusa. But in their midst / Fair Clymene was telling o'er the tale / Of Vulcan's idle vigilance and the stealth / Of Mars' sweet rapine, and from Chaos old / Counted the jostling love-joys of the Gods. / Charmed by whose lay, the while their woolly tasks / With spindles down they drew, yet once again / Smote on his mother's ears the mournful plaint / Of Aristaeus; on their glassy thrones / Amazement held them all; but Arethuse / Before the rest put forth her auburn head, / Peering above the wave-top, and from far / Exclaimed, "Cyrene, sister, not for naught / Scared by a groan so deep, behold! 'tis he, / Even Aristaeus, thy heart's fondest care, / Here by the brink of the Peneian sire / Stands woebegone and weeping, and by name / Cries out upon thee for thy cruelty." / To whom, strange terror knocking at her heart, / "Bring, bring him to our sight," the mother cried; / "His feet may tread the threshold even of Gods." / So saying, she bids the flood yawn wide and yield / A pathway for his footsteps; but the wave

Arched mountain-wise closed round him, and within / Its mighty bosom welcomed, and let speed / To the deep river-bed. And now, with eyes / Of wonder gazing on his mother's hall / And watery kingdom and cave-prisoned pools / And echoing groves, he went, and, stunned by that / Stupendous whirl of waters, separate saw / All streams beneath the mighty earth that glide, / Phasis and Lycus, and that fountain-head / Whence first the deep Enipeus leaps to light, / Whence father Tiber, and whence Anio's flood, / And Hypanis that roars amid his rocks, / And Mysian Caicus, and, bull-browed / 'Twixt either gilded horn, Eridanus, / Than whom none other through the laughing plains / More furious pours into the purple sea. / Soon as the chamber's hanging roof of stone / Was gained, and now Cyrene from her son / Had heard his idle weeping, in due course / Clear water for his hands the sisters bring, / With napkins of shorn pile, while others heap / The board with dainties, and set on afresh / The brimming goblets; with Panchaian fires / Upleap the altars; then the mother spake, / "Take beakers of Maconian wine," she said, / "Pour we to Ocean." Ocean, sire of all, / She worships, and the sister-nymphs who guard / The hundred forests and the hundred streams; / Thrice Vesta's fire with nectar clear she dashed, / Thrice to the roof-top shot the flame and shone:

Armed with which omen she essayed to speak: / "In Neptune's gulf Carpathian dwells a seer, / Caerulean Proteus, he who metes the main / With fish-drawn chariot of two-footed steeds; / Now visits he his native home once more, / Pallene and the Emathian ports; to him / We nymphs do reverence, ay, and Nereus old; / For all things knows the seer, both those which are / And have been, or which time hath yet to bring; / So willed it Neptune, whose portentous flocks, / And loathly sea-calves 'neath the surge he feeds. / Him first, my son, behoves thee seize and bind / That he may all the cause of sickness show, / And grant a prosperous end. For save by force / No rede will he vouchsafe, nor shalt thou bend / His soul by praying; whom once made captive, ply / With rigorous force and fetters; against these / His wiles will break and spend themselves in vain. / I, when the sun has lit his noontide fires, / When the blades thirst, and cattle love the shade, / Myself will guide thee to the old man's haunt, / Whither he hies him weary from the waves, / That thou mayst safelier steal upon his sleep. / But when thou hast gripped him fast with hand and gyve, / Then divers forms and bestial semblances / Shall mock thy grasp; for sudden he will change / To bristly boar, fell tigress, dragon scaled, / And tawny-tufted lioness, or send forth / A crackling sound of fire, and so shake of / The fetters, or in showery drops anon

Dissolve and vanish. But the more he shifts / His endless transformations, thou, my son, / More straitlier clench the clinging bands, until / His body's shape return to that thou sawest, / When with closed eyelids first he sank to sleep." / So saying, an odour of ambrosial dew / She sheds around, and all his frame therewith / Steeps throughly; forth from his trim-combed locks / Breathed effluence sweet, and a lithe vigour leapt / Into his limbs. There is a cavern vast / Scooped in the mountain-side, where wave on wave / By the wind's stress is driven, and breaks far up / Its inmost creeks- safe anchorage from of old / For tempest-taken mariners: therewithin, / Behind a rock's huge barrier, Proteus hides. / Here in close covert out of the sun's eye / The youth she places, and herself the while / Swathed in a shadowy mist stands far aloof. / And now the ravening dog-star that burns up / The thirsty Indians blazed in heaven; his course / The fiery sun had half devoured: the blades / Were parched, and the void streams with droughty jaws / Baked to their mud-beds by the scorching ray, / When Proteus seeking his accustomed cave / Strode from the billows: round him frolicking / The watery folk that people the waste sea / Sprinkled the bitter brine-dew far and wide. / Along the shore in scattered groups to feed / The sea-calves stretch them: while the seer himself, / Like herdsman on the hills when evening bids

The steers from pasture to their stall repair, / And the lambs' bleating whets the listening wolves, / Sits midmost on the rock and tells his tale. / But Aristaeus, the foe within his clutch, / Scarce suffering him compose his aged limbs, / With a great cry leapt on him, and ere he rose / Forestalled him with the fetters; he nathless, / All unforgetful of his ancient craft, / Transforms himself to every wondrous thing, / Fire and a fearful beast, and flowing stream. / But when no trickery found a path for flight, / Baffled at length, to his own shape returned, / With human lips he spake, "Who bade thee, then, / So reckless in youth's hardihood, affront / Our portals? or what wouldst thou hence?"- But he, / "Proteus, thou knowest, of thine own heart thou knowest; / For thee there is no cheating, but cease thou / To practise upon me: at heaven's behest / I for my fainting fortunes hither come / An oracle to ask thee." There he ceased. / Whereat the seer, by stubborn force constrained, / Shot forth the grey light of his gleaming eyes / Upon him, and with fiercely gnashing teeth / Unlocks his lips to spell the fates of heaven:

"Doubt not 'tis wrath divine that plagues thee thus, / Nor light the debt thou payest; 'tis Orpheus' self, / Orpheus unhappy by no fault of his, / So fates prevent not, fans thy penal fires, / Yet madly raging for his ravished bride. / She in her haste to shun thy hot pursuit / Along the stream, saw not the coming death, / Where at her feet kept ward upon the bank / In the tall grass a monstrous water-snake. / But with their cries the Dryad-band her peers / Filled up the mountains to their proudest peaks: / Wailed for her fate the heights of Rhodope, / And tall Pangaea, and, beloved of Mars, / The land that bowed to Rhesus, Thrace no less / With Hebrus' stream; and Orithyia wept, / Daughter of Acte old. But Orpheus' self, / Soothing his love-pain with the hollow shell, / Thee his sweet wife on the lone shore alone, / Thee when day dawned and when it died he sang. / Nay to the jaws of Taenarus too he came, / Of Dis the infernal palace, and the grove / Grim with a horror of great darkness- came, / Entered, and faced the Manes and the King / Of terrors, the stone heart no prayer can tame. / Then from the deepest deeps of Erebus, / Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades / Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms / Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie / To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour / Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;

Matrons and men, and great heroic frames / Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls, / Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes. / Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed, / Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp / Of dull dead water, and, to pen them fast, / Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between. / Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death / Stood lost in wonderment, and the Eumenides, / Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined; / Even Cerberus held his triple jaws agape, / And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still. / And now with homeward footstep he had passed / All perils scathless, and, at length restored, / Eurydice to realms of upper air / Had well-nigh won, behind him following- / So Proserpine had ruled it- when his heart / A sudden mad desire surprised and seized- / Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive. / For at the very threshold of the day, / Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve, / He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice / His own once more. But even with the look, / Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond / Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard / Three times like thunder in the meres of hell. / 'Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought / On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again / The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep / Closes my swimming eyes. And now farewell:

Girt with enormous night I am borne away, / Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more, / These helpless hands.' She spake, and suddenly, / Like smoke dissolving into empty air, / Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him / Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak, / Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time / Hell's boatman brooks he pass the watery bar. / What should he do? fly whither, twice bereaved? / Move with what tears the Manes, with what voice / The Powers of darkness? She indeed even now / Death-cold was floating on the Stygian barge! / For seven whole months unceasingly, men say, / Beneath a skyey crag, by thy lone wave, / Strymon, he wept, and in the caverns chill / Unrolled his story, melting tigers' hearts, / And leading with his lay the oaks along. / As in the poplar-shade a nightingale / Mourns her lost young, which some relentless swain, / Spying, from the nest has torn unfledged, but she / Wails the long night, and perched upon a spray / With sad insistence pipes her dolorous strain, / Till all the region with her wrongs o'erflows. / No love, no new desire, constrained his soul: / By snow-bound Tanais and the icy north, / Far steppes to frost Rhipaean forever wed, / Alone he wandered, lost Eurydice / Lamenting, and the gifts of Dis ungiven. / Scorned by which tribute the Ciconian dames, / Amid their awful Bacchanalian rites

And midnight revellings, tore him limb from limb, / And strewed his fragments over the wide fields. / Then too, even then, what time the Hebrus stream, / Oeagrian Hebrus, down mid-current rolled, / Rent from the marble neck, his drifting head, / The death-chilled tongue found yet a voice to cry / 'Eurydice! ah! poor Eurydice!' / With parting breath he called her, and the banks / From the broad stream caught up 'Eurydice!'"

So Proteus ending plunged into the deep, / And, where he plunged, beneath the eddying whirl / Churned into foam the water, and was gone; / But not Cyrene, who unquestioned thus / Bespake the trembling listener: "Nay, my son, / From that sad bosom thou mayst banish care: / Hence came that plague of sickness, hence the nymphs, / With whom in the tall woods the dance she wove, / Wrought on thy bees, alas! this deadly bane. / Bend thou before the Dell-nymphs, gracious powers: / Bring gifts, and sue for pardon: they will grant / Peace to thine asking, and an end of wrath. / But how to approach them will I first unfold- / Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk, / That browse to-day the green Lycaean heights, / Pick from thy herds, as many kine to match, / Whose necks the yoke pressed never: then for these / Build up four altars by the lofty fanes, / And from their throats let gush the victims' blood, / And in the greenwood leave their bodies lone. / Then, when the ninth dawn hath displayed its beams, / To Orpheus shalt thou send his funeral dues, / Poppies of Lethe, and let slay a sheep / Coal-black, then seek the grove again, and soon / For pardon found adore Eurydice / With a slain calf for victim."

No delay: / The self-same hour he hies him forth to do / His mother's bidding: to the shrine he came, / The appointed altars reared, and thither led / Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk, / With kine to match, that never yoke had known; / Then, when the ninth dawn had led in the day, / To Orpheus sent his funeral dues, and sought / The grove once more. But sudden, strange to tell / A portent they espy: through the oxen's flesh, / Waxed soft in dissolution, hark! there hum / Bees from the belly; the rent ribs overboil / In endless clouds they spread them, till at last / On yon tree-top together fused they cling, / And drop their cluster from the bending boughs.

So sang I of the tilth of furrowed fields, / Of flocks and trees, while Caesar's majesty / Launched forth the levin-bolts of war by deep / Euphrates, and bare rule o'er willing folk / Though vanquished, and essayed the heights of heaven. / I Virgil then, of sweet Parthenope / The nursling, wooed the flowery walks of peace / Inglorious, who erst trilled for shepherd-wights / The wanton ditty, and sang in saucy youth / Thee, Tityrus, 'neath the spreading beech tree's shade.