The Georgics. Virgil

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      Then all the heavens convulsed in wrath thou'lt see-

      Storm-clouds and wind together. Me that night

      Let no man bid fare forth upon the deep,

      Nor rend the rope from shore. But if, when both

      He brings again and hides the day's return,

      Clear-orbed he shineth, idly wilt thou dread

      The storm-clouds, and beneath the lustral North

      See the woods waving. What late eve in fine

      Bears in her bosom, whence the wind that brings

      Fair-weather-clouds, or what the rain South

      Is meditating, tokens of all these

      The sun will give thee. Who dare charge the sun

      With leasing? He it is who warneth oft

      Of hidden broils at hand and treachery,

      And secret swelling of the waves of war.

      He too it was, when Caesar's light was quenched,

      For Rome had pity, when his bright head he veiled

      In iron-hued darkness, till a godless age

      Trembled for night eternal; at that time

      Howbeit earth also, and the ocean-plains,

      And dogs obscene, and birds of evil bode

      Gave tokens. Yea, how often have we seen

      Etna, her furnace-walls asunder riven,

      In billowy floods boil o'er the Cyclops' fields,

      And roll down globes of fire and molten rocks!

      A clash of arms through all the heaven was heard

      By Germany; strange heavings shook the Alps.

      Yea, and by many through the breathless groves

      A voice was heard with power, and wondrous-pale

      Phantoms were seen upon the dusk of night,

      And cattle spake, portentous! streams stand still,

      And the earth yawns asunder, ivory weeps

      For sorrow in the shrines, and bronzes sweat.

      Up-twirling forests with his eddying tide,

      Madly he bears them down, that lord of floods,

      Eridanus, till through all the plain are swept

      Beasts and their stalls together. At that time

      In gloomy entrails ceased not to appear

      Dark-threatening fibres, springs to trickle blood,

      And high-built cities night-long to resound

      With the wolves' howling. Never more than then

      From skies all cloudless fell the thunderbolts,

      Nor blazed so oft the comet's fire of bale.

      Therefore a second time Philippi saw

      The Roman hosts with kindred weapons rush

      To battle, nor did the high gods deem it hard

      That twice Emathia and the wide champaign

      Of Haemus should be fattening with our blood.

      Ay, and the time will come when there anigh,

      Heaving the earth up with his curved plough,

      Some swain will light on javelins by foul rust

      Corroded, or with ponderous harrow strike

      On empty helmets, while he gapes to see

      Bones as of giants from the trench untombed.

      Gods of my country, heroes of the soil,

      And Romulus, and Mother Vesta, thou

      Who Tuscan Tiber and Rome's Palatine

      Preservest, this new champion at the least

      Our fallen generation to repair

      Forbid not. To the full and long ago

      Our blood thy Trojan perjuries hath paid,

      Laomedon. Long since the courts of heaven

      Begrudge us thee, our Caesar, and complain

      That thou regard'st the triumphs of mankind,

      Here where the wrong is right, the right is wrong,

      Where wars abound so many, and myriad-faced

      Is crime; where no meet honour hath the plough;

      The fields, their husbandmen led far away,

      Rot in neglect, and curved pruning-hooks

      Into the sword's stiff blade are fused and forged.

      Euphrates here, here Germany new strife

      Is stirring; neighbouring cities are in arms,

      The laws that bound them snapped; and godless war

      Rages through all the universe; as when

      The four-horse chariots from the barriers poured

      Still quicken o'er the course, and, idly now

      Grasping the reins, the driver by his team

      Is onward borne, nor heeds the car his curb.

      GEORGIC II