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/59

The sport of forest bulls, and goats malign,
And browsing ewes, and gormandising kine.
Nor doth the cold, with white frost matted stiff,
Nor summer's sheer dint on the sultry cliff,
Annoy like these, their venom'd tushes' cark,
And scar indented on the nibbled bark. 451
And hence a goat, the Wine-god's victim, dies,
When ancient pastimes enter on the stage,
And Theseus' sons award the village prize
Beside the cross-roads, where the wits engage;
While rustics, tippling on the velvet sward, 456
Are dancing upon bladders smear'd with lard.
Ausonian farmers too, a Trojan race,
Rude carols troll, and grin with broad grimace;
Grotesque and hideous are the masks they wear,
The which themselves of hollow cork prepare:
They hail thee, Bacchus, in their jocund lines,
And hang thy puppets dancing on the pines. 463
So, in the heyday of their fruitage lush,
The vineyards teem, the nestling valleys blush,
The dingles, and the deep lands, and where'er
The God, parading, shows his forehead fair.
To Bacchus, then, right grateful will we sing
Our native lay, and cakes and chargers bring;