To leap the fence, now plots not on the fold,
Tamed with a sharper pain. The fearful doe,
And flying stag, amidst the greyhounds go,
And round the dwellings roam of man, their fiercer foe.
The scaly nations of the sea profound,
Like shipwrecked carcases, are driven aground,
And mighty phocae, never seen before
In shallow streams, are stranded on the shore.
The viper dead within her hole is found:
Defenceless was the shelter of the ground.
The water-snake, whom fish and paddocks fed,
With staring scales lies poisoned in his bed:
To birds their native heavens contagious prove;
From clouds they fall, and leave their souls above.
Besides, to change their pasture ’tis in vain,
Or trust to physic; physic is their bane.
The learnèd leeches in despair depart,
And shake their heads, desponding of their art.
Tisiphone, let loose from under ground,
Majestically pale, now treads the round,
Before her drives diseases and affright,
And every moment rises to the sight,
Aspiring to the skies, encroaching on the light.
The rivers, and their banks, and hills around,
With lowings and with dying bleats resound.
At length, she strikes an universal blow;
To death at once whole herds of cattle go;
Sheep, oxen, horses, fall; and heaped on high,
The differing species in confusion lie,
Till, warned by frequent ills, the way they found
To lodge their loathsome carrion under ground:
For useless to the currier were their hides;
Nor could their tainted flesh with ocean tides
Be freed from filth; nor could Vulcanian flame
The stench abolish, or the savour tame.
Nor safely could they shear their fleecy store
(Made drunk with poisonous juice, and stiff with gore),
Or touch the web: but, if the vest they wear,
Red blisters rising on their paps appear,
And flaming carbuncles, and noisome sweat,
And clammy dews, that loathsome lice beget;
Till the slow-creeping evil eats his way,
Consumes the parching limbs, and makes the life his prey.
Book IV
Virgil has taken care to raise the subject of each Georgic. In the first, he has only dead matter. In the second, he just steps on the world of life, and describes that of vegetables. In the third, he advances to animals: and in the last, singles out the bee, the most sagacious of them, for his subject.
In this Georgic, he shows us what station is most proper for the bees, and when they begin to gather honey; how to call them home when they swarm, and how to part them when they are engaged in battle. From hence he takes occasion to discover their different kinds; and, after an excursion, relates their prudent and politic administration of affairs, and the diseases that often rage in their hives, with the proper symptoms and remedies of each. In the last place he lays down a method of repairing their kind, supposing their whole breed lost; and gives the history of its invention.
The gifts of Heaven my following song pursues,
Aërial honey, and ambrosial dews.
Maecenas, read this other part, that sings
Embattled squadrons and adventurous kings—
A mighty pomp, though made of little things.
Their arms, their arts, their manners, I disclose,
And how they war, and whence the people rose.
Slight is the subject, but the praise not small,
If Heaven assist, and Phoebus hear my call.
First, for thy bees a quiet station find,
And lodge them under covert of the wind
(For winds, when homeward they return, will drive
The loaded carriers from their evening hive),
Far from the cows’ and goats’ insulting crew,
That trample down the flowers, and brush the dew.
The painted lizard, and the birds of prey,
Foes of the frugal kind, be far away—
The titmouse, and the pecker’s hungry brood,
And Procne, with her bosom stained in blood:
These rob the trading citizens, and bear
The trembling captives through the liquid air,
And for their callow young a cruel feast prepare.
But near a living stream their mansion place,
Edged round with moss, and tufts of matted grass:
And plant (the winds’ impetuous rage to stop)
Wild olive trees, or palms, before the busy shop;
That, when the youthful prince, with loud alarm,
Calls out the venturous colony to swarm—
When first their way through yielding air they wing,
New to the pleasures of their native spring—
The banks of brooks may make a cool retreat
For the raw soldiers from the scalding heat,
And neighbouring trees with friendly shade invite
The troops, unused to long laborious flight.
Then o’er the running stream, or standing lake,
A passage for thy weary people make;
With osier floats the standing waters strew;
Of massy stones make bridges, if it flow;
That basking in the sun thy bees may lie,
And resting there, their flaggy pinions dry,
When late returning home, the laden host
By raging winds is wrecked upon the coast.
Wild thyme and savory set around their cell,
Sweet to the taste, and fragrant to the smell:
Set rows of rosemary with flowering stem,
And let the purple violets drink the stream.
Whether thou build the palace of thy bees
With twisted osiers, or with barks of trees,
Make but a narrow mouth: for, as the cold
Congeals into a lump the liquid gold,
So ’tis again dissolved by summer’s heat;
And the sweet labours both extremes defeat.
And therefore, not in vain, the industrious kind
With dauby wax and flowers the chinks have lined,
And, with their stores of gathered glue, contrive
To stop the vents and crannies of their hive.
Not bird lime, or Idaean pitch, produce
A more tenacious mass of clammy juice.
Nor bees are lodged in hives alone, but found
In chambers of their own beneath the ground:
Their vaulted roofs are hung in pumices,
And in the rotten trunks of hollow trees.
But plaster thou the chinky hives with clay,
And leafy branches o’er their lodgings lay:
Nor place them where too deep a water flows,
Or where the yew, their poisonous neighbour grows;
Nor roast red crabs, to offend the niceness of their nose;
Nor near the steaming stench of muddy ground;
Nor hollow rocks, that render back the sound,
And double images of voice rebound.
For what remains, when golden suns appear,
And under earth have driven the winter year,
The wingèd nation wanders through the skies,
And o’er the plains and shady forest flies:
Then, stooping on the meads and leafy bowers,
They skim the floods, and sip the purple flowers.
Exalted hence, and drunk with secret joy,
Their young succession all their cares employ;
They breed, they brood, instruct, and educate,
And make
