Page:Virgil - The Georgics, Thomas Nevile, 1767.djvu/110

 

With cold the rifted rocks, and bound in frost
The gliding flood, ev'n then no time he lost;
But lopt th' Acanthus' foliage; nor would fail
To chide late Spring, and the slow western gale. 160
Hence in abundant swarms and teeming bees
He first would glory; from prest combs would squeeze
The frothy sweets: limes grac'd his scanty field,
And numerous pines; nor Autumn ceas'd to yield
Of fruitage to his wish as full a store, 165
As his rich boughs in earliest blossom bore.
Pear-trees, matur'd by age, he could dispose,
And elms, of riper growth, in order'd rows,
And thorns with plums then bending, and the plane,
Of shade to shelter Bacchus' social train. 170
But I forbear: confin'd in bounds too strait,
I quit the theme for others to relate.

Now learn the genius of the buzzing kind,
A gift and recompense by Jove assign'd,
When of arm'd priests by tinkling cymbals led 175
In the Dictæan den Heav'n's King they fed.
With them all lies in common; they alone
Of house and children property disown;
By settled laws direct their lives, and know
The joys a country and fixt seats bestow. 180

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