Page:Virgil - The Georgics, Thomas Nevile, 1767.djvu/98

 

Hence men with harrows cleave the clods with pain,
And with their nails scratch furrows for the grain,
And, stretching at the yoke, with creaking sound 635
Drag loaden wains up the steep hilly ground.
No wolves now nightly take their wily way,
Prowl round the folds, and meditate their prey,
Their bosoms labouring with cares more severe:
’Mong men and dogs shy stags, and fearful deer 640
Now roam familiar: on the shore's edge cast
The various natives of the wat'ry waste,
Wash'd by the wave, like ship-wreckt bodies, lie;
And, strange to sight! in rivers Phocæ fly:
With scales erect maz'd adders yield their breath; 645
Nor can her den the viper screen from death:
Not their own element the birds can bear;
Headlong they fall, and leave their lives in air.
Yet more; a change of pasture gives no ease;
Succour implor'd but hastens the disease: 650
Nor art, nor art's Professors ought avail'd;
Chiron himself, and great Melampus fail'd.
Commission'd from the shades of Stygian night
Springs pale Tisiphone to realms of light;
Terror and Plagues precede: high and more high
Her head insatiate shoots into the sky. 656

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