See, on each loaded grove wild fruitage grows,
In the deep wood the sanguine berry glows;
Th' unconquer'd cytisus, profuse of life,

500

Shoots from the wound, and buds beneath the knife;
Firs and tall pines throughout the livelong night
Feed the bright flame, and spread the cheerful light.
And doubts ungrateful man to plant the earth,
And tend on Nature teeming into birth?

Why on sublimer trees the lay prolong?
Willows and lowly broom demand the song;

505

Their leaves the cattle feed, the shepherd shade;
They load with sweets the bee, and fence the blade. 510
Gay waves with box Cytorus' breezy head,
Grateful the pines o'er dark Narycium spread.
How sweet to rove 'mid solitude and shade,
Where boundless Nature scorns all human aid!

E'en barren woods that crest Caucasean heights, 515
Woods whose shent brow th' unwearied whirlwind

smites,

Give pines that spread the canvass o'er the main,
Cedar and cypress that the dome sustain,
Form the swift spokes, and orb the solid wheel,
And cut the stormy brine with crooked keel.

501 Citysus Maranthæ.-Martyn.

520

Shrub trefoil. Columella says the time for cutting it for hay is when its seeds begin to grow large; first dried in the sun, then thoroughly in the shade. It is used as fodder for goats in the Neapolitan territories, whence excellent cheese is made it bears cutting several times in the afforded the Roman husbandman bloom for his bees, seed for his poultry, and shoots and leaves for his flocks.-Stawell.

year.

It

511 Cytorus, according to Pliny, a mountain with a city of

the same name in Paphlagonia.-Voss.

512 Naryx, a town of Magna Græcia.-Stawell.

515 Caucasus, a ridge of mountains running from the Black sea to the Caspian.-Martyn.

Wreaths for thy vines the pliant willow weaves,
Elms for thy flock diffuse their nurturing leaves;
Thy spear a myrtle, dart a corneil grew ;
For Ityræan archers bend the yew.

Smooth box and polish'd lime the lathe demand, 525
And shape their patient forms beneath thy hand;
Launch'd on Po's torrent flood light alders glide,
And bees in mouldering oaks their honey hide.
And shall with these the Bacchic gifts compare?
Bacchus, who fill'd the Centaur feast with war,
When Pholus perish'd, and Hylæus cast
The ponderous bowl that, charged with terror, past.
Ah! happy swain! ah! race beloved of heaven!
Too blest, if conscious of the blessing given!

530

535

For thee just Earth from her prolific beds
Far from wild war spontaneous plenty sheds.
Though nor high domes through all their portals wide
Each morn disgorge the flatterer's refluent tide;
Though nor thy gaze on tortoise columns rest,
The Ephyreïan brass, and gold-wrought vest:
Nor poisoning Tyre thy snowy fleeces soil,
Nor casia taint thy uncorrupted oil;

540

522 When hay and fodder are dear cattle will eat the leaves of elm in preference to oats. In some parts of Herefordshire they gather them in sacks for their swine and other cattle.Evelyn. Stawell.

524 The Ityræi, a people of Cœlo-Syria, famous for archery. -Voss.

539 Les Romains ornoient leurs portes d'écailles de tortues, qu'ils incrustoient encore de pierres précieuses.-De Lille. 540 Corinth, called Ephyre, from Ephyre, the daughter of Epimetheus.

541 The Tyrian dye, which was obtained from two sorts of shell-fish, the murex and the purpura, both belonging to the testacea, or third genus of Linnæus' sixth class. See the process described in Travels in the Two Sicilies by H. Swinburne.

Virgil shows his contempt of spoiling the native whiteness

Yet peace is thine, and life that knows no change,
And various wealth in Nature's boundless range,
The grot, the living fount, the umbrageous glade, 545
And lowing herds, and sleep in soothing shade ;
Thine, all of tame and wild, in lawn and field,
That pastured plains or savage woodlands yield:
Content and patience youth's long toils assuage,
Repose and reverence tend declining age:
There hallow'd shrines, and, as she fled mankind,
There Justice left her last lone trace behind.

But, most beloved, ye Muses! at whose fane
Tranced by deep zeal I consecrate my strain,
Me first accept! and to my search unfold
Heaven and her host in beauteous order roll'd;
Th' eclipse that dims the golden orb of day,

550

555

And the moon laboring thro' her changeful way;

Whence rocks the earth, by what vast force the main Now bursts its barriers, now subsides again;

560

Why wintry suns in ocean swiftly fade,

Or what delays night's slow-descending shade.

But if chill blood, long lingering in my vein,
From Nature's secret lore my search restrain,
Oh may I yet, by fame forgotten, dwell

By gushing fount, wild wood, and shadowy dell!
Oh loved Sperchean plains, Taygetian heights,
Where Spartan virgins rage in Bacchic rites!

565

of wool with that expensive color: as, in the next verse, he speaks of the pure oil being tainted with perfumes.—Martyn. The casia here mentioned is the casia lignea, described by Theophrastus as a sort of cinnamon, an aromatic bark.Stawell.

551 Astrea, or Justice, was feigned by the poets to have descended from heaven in the golden age, and to have returned again to heaven, indignant at the impiety of the brazen age. See Hesiod's Account of Modesty and Justice leaving the world.-Works and Days, book i.

567 Sperchius, a river of Thessaly: Taygetus, a mountain

Oh hide me, where cool Hamus' vales extend,
And boundless shade and solitude defend!

570

How blest the sage! whose soul can pierce each

cause

Of changeful Nature, and her wondrous laws :
Who tramples fear beneath his foot, and braves
Fate, and stern death, and hell's resounding waves.
Blest too, who knows each god that guards the swain,
Pan, old Sylvanus, and the Dryad train.

The popular pow'r, the purple robe of state,

Nor discord urging on fraternal hate,

Not Dacia roused at war-leagued Istria's call,

576

Nor Rome, nor kingdoms doom'd by fate to fall; 580 Envy's wan gaze, nor pity's bleeding tear,

Disturb the tenor of his calm career.

From all that bends the branch, and clothes the fields,

He culls the wealth that willing Nature yields,

Far from the tumult of the madd'ning bar,

And iron justice, and forensic war.

585

Some vex wild seas, some rush in arms on death; These wind the monarch's golden roofs beneath, O'er towns and hapless hearths these carnage spread, To quaff from gems, and robe with Tyre their bed; 590

of Laconia, near Sparta: it was sacred to Bacchus, whose orgies were there celebrated by the Lacedæmonian women.Martyn.

569 Hæmus, a mountain of Thrace.

579 The ancients called the Danube below Illyricum, Ister. The Dacians inhabited the countries now called Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia.

581 It is not the intention of the poet to commend stoical apathy, but simply to observe, that objects, neither of envy, por of distress, disturb the tranquillity of the husbandman.

590 The Romans procured large drinking-cups of one intire gem. Pliny says that Petronius, a few moments before his death, had a cup of great value broken to pieces, lest it should fall into the hands of Nero.- Stawell.

Les anciens se faisoient une gloire de couvrir leurs tables

600

These brood with sleepless gaze o'er buried gold,
The rostrum these with raptured trance behold;
These on throng'd theatres transported gaze
When senates swell the people's shout of praise;
These, stained with brother's blood, in exile roam, 595
Seek a new sun, and leave their blissful home.
The peasant yearly ploughs his native soil:
The lands that blest his fathers bound his toil,
Sustain his herd, his country's wealth increase,
And see his children's children sport in peace.
Each change of season leads new plenty round;
Now lambs and kids along the meadow bound,
Now every furrow loads with corn the plain,
Fruits bend the bough, and garners burst with grain.
His mills at winter swell the olive flood,
His swine haste homeward from the acorn wood;
His are the arbute forests, his the bow'rs
Whence all her varying fruit glad Autumn show'rs;
And where on mellowing rocks prone suns repose,
For him the purple harvest richly glows.

605

610

Chaste love his household guards, and round his knees

Fond infants climb, the foremost kiss to seize ;
Kine from their gushing udders nectar shed,
And wanton kids high toss their butting head.
He, too, at festal days, where flames the shrine,
And, ranged around, his gay compeers recline,

615

de vases de pierres précieuses; et les coupes d'agathe, de jaspe, que l'on conserve dans les cabinets et les trésors publics, servoient probablement aux princes, et aux personnes riches. Telle est la coupe de saphir que l'on conserve dans l'église de Saint Jean à Monza près de Milan. Elle fut laissée par Theudelinde, reine des Lombards, qui bâtit et dota cette église. Dans le trésor de Saint Denis il y a une large coupe d'agathe orientale avec des bas-reliefs représentant un sacrifice.-De Lille.