Page:Virgil - The Georgics, Thomas Nevile, 1767.djvu/83

 

And, with rough leaves and prickly rushes fed, 275
Reposes nightly on a flinty bed;
Oft makes essay, and, butting at some bole,
Vents on his horns the anguish of his soul,
Wastes on the empty winds his random might,
And paws the sands, preluding to the fight. 280
His pow'rs recruited, he now hastes to go,
And headlong springs on his forgetful foe.
As when a billow, whitening by degrees,
Heaves up his swelling bosom from the seas,
Rolls to the land o'er rocks with hideous roar, 285
And like a mountain dashes on the shore;
Whirl'd round the water at the bottom glows,
And a black gravel to the surface throws.

Nor they alone: but beasts that haunt the woods,
The painted birds, the people of the floods, 290
Cattle, and men, to frenzy and to flame
Start wild: Love's empire is in all the same.
The lioness, regardless of her young,
Ne'er roam'd the plain with fiercer fury stung;
Nor bears deform so many deaths spread round, 295
And with such carnage strow'd the forest-ground.
Then most the boar, then most the tiger dread:
How dan'grous then the Libyan wastes to tread!

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