Through all the arteries, had shrivell❜d up
The woful limbs, again there gushed forth
A humour purulent, and all the bones
Atom by atom festering with disease,
Did drain into itself. Oft in the midst
Of the gods' worship, standing at the shrine,
The victim, while the band of wool they wreathe,
With snow-white fillet, midst the ling'ring serfs
Sunk dying. Or if one the priest before
Had slain, thereafter neither when the entrails
Are placed upon them, do the altars blaze,
Nor can the seer consulted give replies;
And scarce, when sheathed in the throat, the knives
Are tinged with blood, and with thin hungry
Upon its surface is the sand embrown'd.
Hence midst the joyous herbage die the calves
In troops, and render up their darling lives
At the full racks; hence on the fawning hounds
Falls madness, and a suffocating cough.
Sick swine convulses, and with quinsied throats Doth choke them. Sinks to earth, ill-starr'd in tasks,
His int'rest once, and reckless of the pasture, The victor horse, and loathes the springs, and strikes
The ground with frequent pawings. Droop'd
At the same while a fitful sweat, and that
In victims at the point of death ice-cold.
Parch'd is the hide, and at the touch to one,
Who handles it, in hardness it resists.
These symptoms they exhibit ere their death,
On the first days; but if in its advance
The pestilence began to wax more fell,
Then sooth came fiery eyes, and deep-gasp'd breath,
Clogg'd with a groan by fits, and to their depths Their flanks they strain with sobbing. Issues forth
Black gore from out their nostrils, and the tongue
All furry cleaves to the beleaguer'd jaws.
It brought relief through an inserted horn
Lenæan draughts t' infuse; that singly seem'd
Health to the dying. Soon this very cure
Was death, and reinvigorate with phrenzies
They burnt; and of themselves, e'en 'neath the jaws
Of sickening death (Gods! grant to holy
Fates better, and that madness to our foes) With gumless teeth their mangled limbs they butcher'd.
But lo! all reeking 'neath the galling plough Tumbles the bull, and blood with foam-flakes mixed
Disgorges at the mouth, and straining heaves
His latest groans. All sorrowing retires The ploughman, from his brother's death disyoking
The sympathizing steer, and planted deep
In the unfinish'd work, he leaves his plough.
Not shades of lofty groves, not soft-sward meads,
Can rouse his spirits; not the stream which
purl'd
O'er rocks, than amber clearer, seeks the plain.
But to their lowest depths his flanks are waxing
All loose and flaccid; and a stupor whelms
His lifeless eyes; and to the ground droops down His neck with sinking weight. What boots his toil,
What all his services? What to have turn'd With plough the heavy lands? And yet to them Not magic gifts of Bacchus have prov'd bane, Not banquets serv'd in courses.
Upon leaves
And viands of the simple herb they feed;
Their draughts are crystal founts, and rivers
purged
In their career.
Nor does distress break off
Their wholesome slumbers. At no other time
They say that in those regions were sought out
Cows for the rites of Juno; and that cars
Were to the lofty treasure-temples drawn
With buffaloes ill-match'd. Therefore with rakes
Struggling they scrape the ground, and e'en with
Dig in the grain, and o'er the mountain heights With strained neck the creaking waggons drag. No wolf explores his ambush round the folds, Nor prowls by night upon the flocks. A care More poignant tames him. Coward does and harts,
Poor runaways, now rove both amidst hounds And round the roofs of man. The progeny now Of boundless ocean, and each tribe of things That swim the waters, on the shore's last verge Like shipwreck'd corses doth the wave wash on. Seals into rivers fly, unwonted guests.
And vainly rampired by his winding shrouds The viper dies, and water-snakes with scales Erect, as thunder-smitten. E'en to birds Unkindly proves the air, and headlong plung'd, Beneath the lofty cloud their life they quit. Moreo'er nor boots it now that there be chang'd Their pastures, and each far-sought art but harms.
Leeches have yielded. Phillyras's son
Chiron, and Amythaonian Melampus.
All ghostly-pale Tisiphone doth rage,
And sped from Stygian darkness into light,
Diseases drives before her and alarm,
And tow'ring day by day her rav'ning head
Rears higher. With the bleating cry of flocks
And frequent lowings, rivers and dry banks
Echo, and sloping hills. And now in troops
She spreads the carnage, and in stalls themselves
Piles corses weltering in foul bloody ooze,
Until they learn to cover them in 'earth,
And hide in graves. For neither in their skins
Was service. Nor can any either
purge
Their entrails with the flames, or overcome
Their taint with waters. Nor can they in sooth
Their fleeces shear, with plague and filth cor-
Nor touch the putrid webs. Nay e'en if man
Had tried the loath'd apparel, burning pimples,
And sweat unclean, the fetid limbs pursued,
And after ling'ring no long space in life
His tainted limbs the sacred fire would eat.
FORTHWITH aerial honey's heav'n-sent boons
Will I despatch. This part alike, Mæcenas,
Regard with favour. Pageants will I sing
Worthy thy wonder, of a tiny world,
And high-soul'd chieftains, and in order due
Of a whole race the usances, and tastes,
And clans, and battles. On a lowly theme
The travail, yet not lowly the renown,
If favouring deities a bard indulge,
And Phoebus due-invoked lists the prayer.
In the first place a settlement for bees
And homestead must be sought, where nor may,
lie
Inlet for winds (since winds preclude the pow'r
To convoy forage home), nor sheep and kids
Rampant may trample on the flowers, or heifer,
Roving the plain, shake down the dew, and
bruise
To earth the springing herbage. Far aloof
Be too the enamell'd lizards' scale-clad backs,
From the rich cotes, and meropes, and birds
Of other tribes, and Procne on her breast
Deep-stamp'd with hands of blood.
They desolate far and near; and e'en the bees
Upon the wing off in their mouth they bear,
A sav'ry banquet for their ruthless nests.
But close at hand be crystal springs and pools
Verdant with moss; and huddling through the
grass
A shallow rill; and let a palm o'ershade
The vestibule, or oleaster vast,
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