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/49

For proof—see how wild olives there abound
And coppice-berries loosely strew the ground.
A buxom loam, with luscious juices fresh, 221
And swarded well, and sleek as creamy flesh—
Like soft savannahs sloping 'neath our feet,
Where hollow-curved the mountain valleys meet,
Where runnels melting from the craggy peak 225
Are filtering, drop by drop, an unctuous reek,
A slope that woos the south at every turn,
And feeds that enemy of ploughs the fern—
This soil will grant in strongest health the vine,
And gushing with the copious god of wine; 230
How lush with grapes in clusters manifold—
The juice we sip from flagons and from gold;
When the fat Tuscan puffs his altar pipe,
And chargers bend beneath the smoking tripe.
But if thou lovest more the calves and kine,
Or lambs or kids (those blisterers of the vine)—
Seek thou the glades of smug Tarentum's coast,
Or such a park as hapless Mantua lost,
With snow-white swans upon the lilied deep,
And limpid wells, and pasturage for sheep; 240
And all the kine browse in a summer's day
The cooling dews of one brief night repay.