Me before all things may the Muses sweet, Whose rites I bear with mighty passion pierced, Receive, and show the paths and stars of heaven, The sun's eclipses and the labouring moons, From whence the earthquake, by what power the seas Swell from their depths, and, every barrier burst, Sink back upon themselves, why winter-suns So haste to dip 'neath ocean, or what check The lingering night retards. But if to these High realms of nature the cold curdling blood About my heart bar access, then be fields And stream-washed vales my solace, let me love Rivers and woods, inglorious. Oh for you Plains, and Spercheius, and Taygete, By Spartan maids o'er-revelled! Oh, for one, Would set me in deep dells of Haemus cool, And shield me with his boughs' o'ershadowing might!
Happy, who had the skill to understand Nature's hid causes, and beneath his feet All terrors cast, and death's relentless doom, And the loud roar of greedy Acheron.
Blest too is he who knows the rural gods, Pan, old Silvanus, and the sister-nymphs!
Him nor the rods of public power can bend, Nor kingly purple, nor fierce feud that drives Brother to turn on brother, nor descent Of Dacian from the Danube's leagued flood, Nor Rome's great State, nor kingdoms like to die;Nor hath he grieved through pitying of the poor, Nor envied him that hath. What fruit the boughs, And what the fields, of their own bounteous will Have borne, he gathers; nor iron rule of laws, Nor maddened Forum have his eyes beheld, Nor archives of the people. Others vex The darksome gulfs of Ocean with their oars, Or rush on steel: they press within the courts And doors of princes; one with havoc falls Upon a city and its hapless hearths, From gems to drink, on Tyrian rugs to lie;This hoards his wealth and broods o'er buried gold;One at the rostra stares in blank amaze;One gaping sits transported by the cheers, The answering cheers of plebs and senate rolled Along the benches: bathed in brothers' blood Men revel, and, all delights of hearth and home For exile changing, a new country seek Beneath an alien sun. The husbandman With hooked ploughshare turns the soil; from hence Springs his year's labour; hence, too, he sustains Country and cottage homestead, and from hence His herds of cattle and deserving steers.
No respite! still the year o'erflows with fruit, Or young of kine, or Ceres' wheaten sheaf, With crops the furrow loads, and bursts the barns.
Winter is come: in olive-mills they bruise The Sicyonian berry; acorn-cheered The swine troop homeward; woods their arbutes yield;So, various fruit sheds Autumn, and high up On sunny rocks the mellowing vintage bakes.
Meanwhile about his lips sweet children cling;His chaste house keeps its purity; his kine Drop milky udders, and on the lush green grass Fat kids are striving, horn to butting horn.
Himself keeps holy days; stretched o'er the sward, Where round the fire his comrades crown the bowl, He pours libation, and thy name invokes, Lenaeus, and for the herdsmen on an elm Sets up a mark for the swift javelin; they Strip their tough bodies for the rustic sport.
Such life of yore the ancient Sabines led, Such Remus and his brother: Etruria thus, Doubt not, to greatness grew, and Rome became The fair world's fairest, and with circling wall Clasped to her single breast the sevenfold hills.
Ay, ere the reign of Dicte's king, ere men, Waxed godless, banqueted on slaughtered bulls, Such life on earth did golden Saturn lead.
Nor ear of man had heard the war-trump's blast, Nor clang of sword on stubborn anvil set.
But lo! a boundless space we have travelled o'er;'Tis time our steaming horses to unyoke.
