Page:The Farm and Fruit of Old a translation in verse of the 1st and 2nd Georgics of Virgil, by a market-gardener (1862).djvu/43

But nuts are grafted on the rough arbute, 85
And barren planes bear apple-trees in fruit:
$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$With chesnut bloom the beech is silver-laid,
The mountain-ash in white pear-flowers array'd,
And swine crunch acorns in the elm-tree shade.
Nor is the mode to bud and graft the same—
For where the buds, (like emeralds in their frame,)
Push'd forth the bark, their filmy jerkins split,
A narrow eyelet through the crown is slit;
Herein the germ, a stranger, they compress,
And teach with juicy rind to coalesce. 95
To graft—the knotless trunks are lopp'd amain,
And cleft with wedges deep into the grain,
Then fruitful scions are enclosed; nor long
Till a great tree with laughing boughs leaps out,
And looks up with astonishment and doubt, 100
At stranger leaves, and fruit that must be wrong.
Nay, passing that, more kinds than one there be
Of elm and willow, lote and cypress tree:
Plump olives, too, distinctive features own,
Orchads, and Rays, and Bruisers tart of tone. 105