Part IV

Hew from the wood a mortar of three feet;
Three cubits may the pestle’s length complete:
Seven feet the fittest axle-tree extends;
If eight the log, the eighth a mallet lends.
Cleave many curved blocks thy wheel to round,
And let three spans its outmost orbit bound;
Whereon slow-rolling thy suspended wain,
Ten spans in breadth, may traverse firm the plain.

If hill or field supply a holm-oak bough
Of bending figure like the downward plough,
Bear it away: this durable remains
While the strong steers in ridges cleave the plains:
If with firm nails thy artist join the whole,
Affix the share-beam, and adapt the pole.

Two ploughs provide, on household works intent,
This art-compacted, that of native bent:
A prudent fore-thought: one may crashing fail,
The other, instant yoked, shall prompt avail.
Of elm or bay the draught-pole firm endures,
The plough-tail holm, the share-beam oak secures.

Two males procure: be nine their sum of years:
Then hale and strong for toil the sturdy steers:
Nor shall they headstrong-struggling spurn the soil,
And snap the plough and mar th’ unfinish’d toil.
In forty’s prime thy ploughman: one with bread
Of four-squared loaf in double portions fed.
He steadily shall cut the furrow true,
Nor towards his fellows glance a rambling view:
Still on his task intent: a stripling throws
Heedless the seed, and in one furrow strows
The lavish handful twice: while wistful stray
His longing thoughts to comrades far away.

Mark yearly when among the clouds on high
Thou hear’st the shrill crane’s migratory cry,
Of ploughing-time the sign and wintry rains:
Care gnaws his heart who destitute remains
Of the fit yoke: for then the season falls
To feed thy horned steers within their stalls.
Easy to speak the word, “beseech thee friend!
Thy waggon and thy yoke of oxen lend:”
Easy the prompt refusal; “nay, but I
Have need of oxen, and their work is nigh.”
Rich in his own conceit, he then too late
May think to rear the waggon’s timber’d weight:
Fool! nor yet knows the complicated frame
A hundred season’d blocks may fitly claim:
These let thy timely care provide before,
And pile beneath thy roof the ready store.

Improve the season: to the plough apply
Both thou and thine; and toil in wet and dry:
Haste to the field with break of glimmering morn,
That so thy grounds may wave with thickening corn.

In spring upturn the glebe: and break again
With summer tilth the iterated plain,
It shall not mock thy hopes: be last thy toil,
Raised in light ridge, to sow the fallow’d soil:
The fallow’d soil bids execration fly,
And brightens with content the infant’s eye.
Jove subterrene, chaste Ceres claim thy vow,
When grasping first the handle of the plough,
O’er thy broad oxen’s backs thy quickening hand
With lifted stroke lets fall the goading wand;
Whilst yoked and harness’d by the fastening thong,
They slowly drag the draught-pole’s length along.
So shall the sacred gifts of earth appear,
And ripe luxuriance clothe the plenteous ear.

A boy should tread thy steps: with rake o’erlay
The buried seed, and scare the birds away:
(Good is the apt œconomy of things
While evil management its mischief brings:)
Thus, if aërial Jove thy cares befriend,
And crown thy tillage with a prosperous end,
Shall the rich ear in fulness of its grain
Nod on the stalk and bend it to the plain.
So shalt thou sweep the spider’s films away,
That round thy hollow bins lie hid from day:
I ween, rejoicing in the foodful stores
Obtain’d at length, and laid within thy doors:
For plenteousness shall glad thee through the year
Till the white blossoms of the spring appear:
Nor thou on others’ heaps a gazer be,
But others owe their borrow’d store to thee.

If, ill-advised, thou turn the genial plains
His wintry tropic when the sun attains;
Thou, then, may’st reap, and idle sit between:
Mocking thy gripe the meagre stalks are seen:
Whilst, little joyful, gather’st thou in bands
The corn whose chaffy dust bestrews thy hands.
In one scant basket shall thy harvest lie,
And few shall pass thee, then, with honouring eye.
Now thus, now otherwise is Jove’s design;
To men inscrutable the ways divine:
But if thou late upturn the furrow’d field,
One happy chance a remedy may yield.
O’er the wide earth when men the cuckoo hear
From spreading oak-leaves first delight their ear,
Three days and nights let heaven in ceaseless rains
Deep as thy ox’s hoof o’erflow the plains;
So shall an equal crop thy time repair
With his who earlier launch’d the shining share.
Lay all to heart: nor let the blossom’d hours
Of spring escape thee; nor the timely showers.

Pass by the brazier’s forge where loiterers meet,
Nor saunter in the portico’s throng’d heat;
When in the wintry season rigid cold
Invades the limbs and binds them in its hold.
Lo! then th’ industrious man with thriving store
Improves his household management the more:
And this do thou: lest intricate distress
Of winter seize, and needy cares oppress:
Lest, famine-smitten, thou, at length, be seen
To gripe thy tumid foot with hand from hunger lean.
Pampering his empty hopes, yet needing food,
On ill designs behold the idler brood:
Sit in the crowded portico and feed
On that ill hope, while starving with his need.
Thou in mid-summer to thy labourers cry,
“Make now your nests,” for summer hours will fly.

Beware the January month: beware
Those hurtful days, that keenly piercing air
Which flays the herds; those frosts that bitter sheathe
The nipping air and glaze the ground beneath.
From Thracia, nurse of steeds, comes rushing forth,
O’er the broad sea, the whirlwind of the north,
And moves it with his breath: then howl the shores
Of earth, and long and loud the forest roars.
He lays the oaks of lofty foliage low,
Tears the thick pine-trees from the mountains brow
And strews the vallies with their overthrow.
He stoops to earth; shrill swells the storm around,
And all the vast wood rolls a deeper roar of sound.
The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold,
And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold.
Thick is the hairy coat, the shaggy skin,
But that all-chilling breath shall pierce within.
Not his rough hide can then the ox avail:
The long-hair’d goat defenceless feels the gale:
Yet vain the north-wind’s rushing strength to wound
The flock, with thickening fleeces fenced around.
He bows the old man, crook’d beneath the storm;
But spares the smooth-skin’d virgin’s tender form.
Yet from bland Venus’ mystic rites aloof,
She safe abides beneath her mother’s roof:
The suppling waters of the bath she swims,
With shining ointment sleeks her dainty limbs:
In her soft chamber pillow’d to repose,
While through the wintry nights the tempest blows.
Now gnaws the boneless polypus his feet;
Starved midst bleak rocks, his desolate retreat:
For now no more the sun with gleaming ray
Through seas transparent lights him to his prey.
O’er the swarth Æthiop rolls his bright career,
And slowly gilds the Grecian hemisphere.
And now the horned and unhorned kind
Whose lair is in the wood, sore-famish’d grind
Their sounding jaws, and froz’n and quaking fly
Where oaks the mountain dells imbranch on high:
They seek to couch in thickets of the glen,
Or lurk deep-shelter’d in the rocky den.
Like aged men who, prop’d on crutches, tread
Tottering with broken strength and stooping head,
So move the beasts of earth; and creeping low
Shun the white flakes and dread the drifting snow.

I warn thee, now, around thy body cast,
A thick defence, and covering from the blast:
Let the soft cloak its woolly warmth bestow:
The under-tunic to thy ankle flow:
On a scant warp a woof abundant weave;
Thus warmly wov’n the mantling cloak receive:
Nor shall thy limbs beneath its ample fold
With bristling hairs start shivering to the cold.
Shoes from the hide of a strong-dying ox
Bind round thy feet; lined thick with woollen socks:
And kid-skins ’gainst the rigid season sew
With sinew of the bull, and sheltering throw
Athwart thy shoulders when the rains impend;
And let a well-wrought cap thy head defend,
And screen thine ears, while drenching showers descend.