Page:Virgil - The Georgics, Thomas Nevile, 1767.djvu/30

 

While lasts warm weather plow and sow your fields;
Winter long leisure to the farmer yields 350
The genial God, when pinching colds annoy,
Invites the rustic throng to scenes of joy;
Their stores in social intercourse they share,
And in carousals banish ev'ry care:
Happy as mariners, all perils past, 355
When their crown'd vessels touch the port at last.
Pluck acorns at this season of the year,
And of their fruits the bay and olive clear,
And strip the myrtle: toils and nets prepare
For cranes and stags, and trace the long-ear'd hare;
Now let the slinger learn to stun the doe, 361
While rivers push down ice, and earth lies deep in snow.
Why should I storms and signs autumnal sing?
Or tell, what vigilance it asks, when spring
In heavy show'rs precipitates away, 365
Or the days shorten, and the heats decay;
In the green stem when swells the milky grain,
And the spik'd harvests bristle all the plain?
Oft have I seen, when to the yellow land
The rural lord had brought his Reaper-band; 370
To the brown sheaf as he the swath applies,
Instant the warring winds tumultuous rise:

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