The Argument.
The poem comprehends the general œconomy of industry and morals. In the first division of the subject, the state of the world, past and present, is described; for the purpose of exemplifying the condition of human nature: which entails on man the necessity of exertion to preserve the goods of life; and leaves him no alternative but honest industry or unjust violence; of which the good and evil consequences are respectively illustrated. Two Strifes are said to have been sent into the world, the one promoting dissension, the other emulation. Perses is exhorted to abjure the former and embrace the latter; and an apposite allusion is made to the circumstance of his litigiously disputing the patrimonial estate, of which, through the corruption of the judges, he obtained the larger proportion. The judges are rebuked, and cheap contentment is apostrophized as the true secret of happiness. Such is stated to have been the original sense of mankind before the necessity of labour existed. The origin of labour is deduced from the resentment of Jupiter against Prometheus; which resentment led to the formation of Pandora: or Woman: who is described with her attributes, and is represented as bringing with her into the world a casket of diseases. The degeneracy of man is then traced through successive ages. The three first ages are severally distinguished as the golden, the silver, and the brazen. The fourth has no metallic distinction, but is described as the heroic age, and as embracing the æra of the Trojan war. The fifth is styled the iron age, and, according to the Poet, is that in which he lives. The general corruption of mankind in this age is detailed, and Modesty and Justice are represented taking their flight to heaven. A pointed allusion to the corrupt administration of the laws, in his own particular instance, is introduced in a fable, typical of oppression. Justice is described as invisibly following those who violate her decrees with avenging power, and as lamenting in their streets the wickedness of a corrupted people. The temporal blessings of an upright nation are contrasted with the temporal evils which a wicked nation draws down from an angry Providence. Holy Dæmons are represented as hovering about the earth, and keeping watch over the actions of men. Justice is again introduced, carrying her complaints to the feet of Jupiter, and obtaining that the crimes of rulers be visited on their people. A pathetic appeal is then made to these rulers in their judicial capacity, urging them to renounce injustice. After some further exhortations to virtue and industry, and a number of unconnected precepts, the Poet enters on the Georgical part of his subject: which contains the prognostics of the seasons of agricultural labour, and rules appertaining to wood-felling, carpentry, ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing, vine-dressing, and the vintage. This division of the subject includes a description of winter and of a repast in summer. He then treats of navigation: and concludes with some desultory precepts of religion, moral decorum, and superstition: and lastly, with a specification of Days: which are divided into holy, auspicious, and inauspicious: mixed and intermediary: or such as are entitled to no remarkable observance.
WORKS.
I.
Come, Muses! ye, that from Pieria raise
The song of glory, sing your father’s praise.
By Jove’s high will th’ unknown and known of fame
Exist, the nameless and the fair of name.
’Tis He with ease [27]the bowed feeble rears,
And casts the mighty from their highest spheres:
With ease of human grandeur shrouds the ray:
With ease on abject darkness pours the day:
Straightens the crooked: grinds to dust the proud;
Thunderer on high, whose dwelling is the cloud.
Now bend thine eyes from heaven: behold and hear:
Rule thou the laws in righteousness and fear:
While I to Perses’ heart would fain convey
The truths of knowledge which inspire my lay.
Two Strifes on earth of soul divided rove:
The wise will this condemn and that approve:
Accursed the one spreads misery from afar,
And stirs up discord and pernicious war:
Men love not this: yet heaven-enforced maintain
The strife abhorr’d, but still abhorr’d in vain.
[28]The other elder rose from darksome night:
The God high-throned, who dwells in ether’s light,
Fix’d deep in earth, and centred midst mankind
This better strife, which fires the slothful mind.
The needy idler sees the rich, and hastes
Himself to guide the plough, and plant the wastes:
Ordering his household: thus the neighbour’s eyes
Mark emulous the wealthy neighbour rise:
Beneficent this strife’s incensing zeal:
The potters angry turn the forming wheel:
Smiths beat their anvils; [29]almsmen zealous throng,
And minstrels kindle with the minstrel’s song.
Oh Perses! thou within thy secret breast
Repose the maxims by my care imprest;
Nor ever let that evil-joying strife
Have power to wean thee from the toils of life;
The whilst thy prying eyes the forum draws,
Thine ears the process, and the din of laws.
Small care be his of wrangling and debate
For whose ungather’d food the garners wait;
Who wants within the summer’s plenty stored,
Earth’s kindly fruits, and Ceres’ yearly hoard.
With these replenish’d, at the brawling bar
For others’ wealth go instigate the war.
But this thou mays’t no more: let justice guide,
Best boon of heaven, and future strife decide.
Not so we shared [30]the patrimonial land
When greedy pillage fill’d thy grasping hand:
The bribe-devouring Judges lull’d by thee
The sentence gave and stamp’d the false decree:
Oh fools! who know not in their selfish soul
How far the half is better than the whole:
[31]The good which asphodel and mallows yield,
The feast of herbs, the dainties of the field!
[32]The food of man in deep concealment lies:
The angry gods have hid it from our eyes.
Else had one day bestow’d sufficient cheer,
And, though inactive, fed thee through the year.
Then might thy hand [33]have laid the rudder by,
In blackening smoke for ever hung on high;
Then had the labouring ox foregone the soil,
And patient mules had found reprieve from toil.
But Jove conceal’d our food: incensed at heart,
Since [34]mock’d by wise Prometheus’ wily art.
Sore ills to man devised the heavenly Sire,
And hid the shining element of fire.
Prometheus then, benevolent of soul,
In hollow reed the spark recovering stole;
Cheering to man; and mock’d the god, whose gaze
Serene rejoices in the lightning’s blaze.
“Oh son of Japhet!” with indignant heart,
Spake the Cloud-gatherer: “oh, unmatch’d in art!
Exultest thou in this the flame retrieved,
And dost thou triumph in the god deceived?
But thou, with the posterity of man,
Shalt rue the fraud whence mightier ills began:
I will send evil for thy stealthy fire,
[35]An ill which all shall love, and all desire.
The Sire who rules the earth and sways the pole
Had said, and laughter fill’d his secret soul:
He bade famed Vulcan with the speed of thought
Mould plastic clay with tempering waters wrought:
Inform with voice of man the murmuring tongue;
The limbs with man’s elastic vigour strung;
The aspect fair as goddesses above,
A virgin’s likeness with the brows of love.
He bade Minerva teach the skill, that sheds
A thousand colours in the gliding threads:
Bade lovely Venus breathe around her face
The charm of air, the witchery of grace:
Infuse corroding pangs of keen desire,
And cares that trick the form with prank’d attire:
Bade Hermes last implant the craft refined
Of thievish manners and a shameless mind.
He gives command; th’ inferior powers obey:
The crippled artist moulds the temper’d clay:
By Jove’s design a maid’s coy image rose:
[36]The zone, the dress, Minerva’s hands dispose:
Adored Persuasion, and the Graces young,
[37]With chains of gold her shapely person hung:
Round her smooth brow [38]the beauteous-tressed Hours
A garland twined of spring’s purpureal flowers:
The whole, Minerva with adjusting art
Forms to her shape and fits to every part.
Last by the counsels of deep-thundering Jove,
The Argicide, [39]his herald from above,
Adds thievish manners, adds insidious lies,
And prattled speech of sprightly railleries:
Then by the wise interpreter of heaven
The name Pandora to the maid was given:
Since all in heaven conferr’d their gifts to charm,
For man’s inventive race, this beauteous harm.
When now the Sire had form’d this mischief fair,
He bade heaven’s messenger convey through air
To Epimetheus’ hands th’ inextricable snare:
Nor he recall’d within his heedless thought
The warning lesson by Prometheus taught:
That he disclaim each present from the skies,
And straight restore, lest ill to man arise:
But he received; and conscious knew too late
Th’ insidious gift, and felt the curse of fate.
On earth of yore the sons of men abode,
From evil free and labour’s galling load:
Free from diseases that with racking rage
Precipitate the pale decline of age.
Now swift the days of manhood haste away,
And misery’s pressure turns the temples gray.
The woman’s hands an ample casket bear;
She lifts the lid; she scatters ills in air.
Within [40]th’ unbroken vase Hope sole remained,
Beneath the vessel’s rim from flight detained:
The maid, by counsels of cloud-gathering Jove,
The coffer seal’d and dropp’d the lid above.
Issued the rest in quick dispersion hurl’d,
And woes innumerous roam’d the breathing world:
With ills the land is rife, with ills the sea,
Diseases haunt our frail humanity:
Through noon, through night [41]on casual wing they glide,
Silent, a voice the Power all-wise denied.
Thus mayst thou not elude th’ omniscient mind:
Now if thy thoughts be to my speech inclin’d,
I in brief phrase would other lore impart
Wisely and well: thou, grave it on thy heart.
When gods alike and mortals rose to birth,
A golden race th’ immortals form’d on earth
Of many-languaged men: they lived of old
When Saturn reign’d in heaven, an age of gold.
Like gods they lived, with calm untroubled mind;
Free from the toils and anguish of our kind:
Nor e’er decrepid age mishaped their frame,
The hand’s, the foot’s proportions still the same.
Strangers to ill, their lives in feasts flow’d by:
[42]Wealthy in flocks; dear to the blest on high:
Dying they sank in sleep, nor seem’d to die.
Theirs was each good; the life-sustaining soil
Yielded its copious fruits, unbribed by toil:
They with abundant goods midst quiet lands
All willing shared the gatherings of their hands.
When earth’s dark womb had closed this race around,
[43]High Jove as dæmons raised them from the ground.
Earth-wandering spirits they their charge began,
The ministers of good, and guards of man.
Mantled with mist of darkling air they glide,
And compass earth, and pass on every side:
And mark with earnest vigilance of eyes
Where just deeds live, or crooked wrongs arise:
[44]Their kingly state; and, delegate from heaven,
By their vicarious hands [45]the wealth of fields is given.
The gods then form’d a second race of man,
Degenerate far; and silver years began.
Unlike the mortals of a golden kind:
Unlike in frame of limbs and mould of mind.
Yet still [46]a hundred years beheld the boy
Beneath the mother’s roof, her infant joy;
All tender and unform’d: but when the flower
Of manhood bloom’d, it wither’d in an hour.
Their frantic follies wrought them pain and woe:
Nor mutual outrage could their hands forego:
Nor would they serve the gods: nor altars raise
That in just cities shed their holy blaze.
Them angry Jove ingulf’d; who dared refuse
The gods their glory and their sacred dues:
Yet named the second-blest in earth they lie,
And second honours grace their memory.
The Sire of heaven and earth created then
A race, the third of many-languaged men.
Unlike the silver they: of brazen mould:
With ashen war-spears terrible and bold:
Their thoughts were bent on violence alone,
The deeds of battle and the dying groan.
Bloody their feasts, with wheaten food unblest:
Of adamant was each unyielding breast.
Huge, nerved with strength each hardy giant stands,
And mocks approach with unresisted hands:
Their mansions, implements, and armour shine
In brass; dark iron slept within the mine.
They by each other’s hands inglorious fell,
In freezing darkness plunged, the house of hell:
Fierce though they were, their mortal course was run;
Death gloomy seized, and snatch’d them from the sun.
Them when th’ abyss had cover’d from the skies,
Lo! the fourth age on nurturing earth arise:
Jove form’d the race a better, juster line;
A race of heroes and of stamp divine:
Lights of the age that rose before our own;
As demi-gods o’er earth’s wide regions known.
Yet these dread battle hurried to their end:
Some where the seven-fold gates of Thebes ascend:
The Cadmian realm: where they with fatal might
Strove for the flocks of Œdipus in fight.
Some war in navies led [47]to Troy’s far shore;
O’er the great space of sea their course they bore;
For sake of Helen with the beauteous hair:
And death for Helen’ sake o’erwhelm’d them there.
Them on earth’s utmost verge the god assign’d
A life, a seat, distinct from human kind:
Beside the deepening whirlpools of the main,
[48]In those blest isles where Saturn holds his reign,
Apart from heaven’s immortals: calm they share
A rest unsullied by the clouds of care:
And yearly thrice with sweet luxuriance crown’d
Springs the ripe harvest from the teeming ground.
Oh would that Nature had denied me birth
Midst this fifth race; [49]this iron age of earth:
That long before within the grave I lay,
Or long hereafter could behold the day!
Corrupt the race, with toils and griefs opprest,
Nor day nor night can yield a pause of rest.
Still do the gods a weight of care bestow,
Though still some good is mingled with the woe.
Jove on this race of many-languaged man,
Speeds the swift ruin which but slow began:
[50]For scarcely spring they to the light of day
Ere age untimely strews their temples gray.
No fathers in the sons their features trace:
The sons reflect no more the father’s face:
The host with kindness greets his guest no more,
And friends and brethren love not as of yore.
Reckless of heaven’s revenge, the sons behold
The hoary parents wax too swiftly old:
And impious point the keen dishonouring tongue
With hard reproofs and bitter mockeries hung:
Nor grateful in declining age repay
The nurturing fondness of their better day.
[51]Now man’s right hand is law: for spoil they wait,
And lay their mutual cities desolate:
Unhonour’d he, by whom his oath is fear’d,
Nor are the good beloved, the just revered.
With favour graced the evil-doer stands,
Nor curbs with shame nor equity his hands:
With crooked slanders wounds the virtuous man,
And stamps with perjury what hate began.
Lo! ill-rejoicing Envy, wing’d with lies,
Scattering calumnious rumours as she flies,
The steps of miserable men pursue
With haggard aspect, blasting to the view.
Till those fair forms in snowy raiment bright
[52]Leave the broad earth and heaven-ward soar from sight:
Justice and Modesty from mortals driven,
Rise to th’ immortal family of heaven:
Dread sorrows to forsaken man remain;
No cure of ills: no remedy of pain.
[53]Now unto kings I frame the fabling song,
However wisdom unto kings belong.
A stooping hawk, crook-talon’d, from the vale
Bore in his pounce [54]a neck-streak’d nightingale,
And snatch’d among the clouds: beneath the stroke
This piteous shriek’d, and that imperious spoke:
“Wretch! why these screams? a stronger holds thee now:
Where’er I shape my course a captive thou,
Maugre thy song, must company my way:
I rend my banquet or I loose my prey.
Senseless is he who dares with power contend:
Defeat, rebuke, despair shall be his end.”
The swift hawk spake, with wings spread wide in air;
But thou to justice cleave, and wrong forbear.
Wrong, if he yield to its abhorr’d controul,
Shall pierce like iron in the poor man’s soul:
Wrong weighs the rich man’s conscience to the dust,
When his foot stumbles on the way unjust:
Far diff’rent is the path; a path of light,
That guides the feet to equitable right.
The end of righteousness, enduring long,
Exceeds the short prosperity of wrong.
[55]The fool by suffering his experience buys;
The penalty of folly makes him wise.
With crooked judgments, lo! the oath’s dread God
Avenging runs, and tracks them where they trod:
Rough are the ways of Justice as the sea;
Dragg’d to and fro by men’s corrupt decree:
Bribe-pamper’d men! whose hands perverting draw
The right aside, and warp the wrested law.
Though, while corruption on their sentence waits,
They thrust pale Justice from their haughty gates;
Invisible their steps the virgin treads,
And musters evils o’er their sinful heads.
She with the dark of air her form arrays
And [56]walks in awful grief the city-ways:
Her wail is heard, her tear upbraiding falls
[57]O’er their stain’d manners, their devoted walls.
But they who never from the right have stray’d,
Who as the citizen the stranger aid;
[58]They and their cities flourish: genial Peace
Dwells in their borders, and their youth increase:
Nor Jove, whose radiant eyes behold afar,
Hangs forth in heaven the signs of grievous war.
Nor scathe nor famine on the righteous prey;
Feasts, strewn by earth, employ their easy day:
Rich are their mountain oaks: the topmost trees
With clustering acorns full, the trunks with hiving bees.
Burthen’d with fleece their panting flocks: the race
Of woman soft [59]reflects the father’s face:
Still flourish they, nor tempt with ships the main;
The fruits of earth are pour’d from every plain.
But o’er the wicked race, to whom belong
The thought of evil, and the deed of wrong,
Saturnian Jove of wide-beholding eyes
Bids the dark signs of retribution rise:
And oft the crimes of one destructive fall:
The crimes of one are visited on all.
The god sends down his angry plagues from high,
Famine and pestilence: in heaps they die.
He smites with barrenness the marriage-bed,
And generations moulder with the dead:
Again in vengeance of his wrath he falls
On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls:
Arrests their navies on the ocean’s plain,
And whelms their strength with mountains of the main.
Ponder, oh judges! in your inmost thought
The retribution by his vengeance wrought.
Invisible, the gods are ever nigh,
Pass through the midst, and bend th’ all-seeing eye:
The men who grind the poor, who wrest the right,
Awless of heaven’s revenge, stand naked to their sight.
For thrice ten thousand [60]holy demons rove
This breathing world, the delegates of Jove.
Guardians of man, [61]their glance alike surveys
The upright judgments and th’ unrighteous ways.
A virgin pure is Justice: and her birth,
August, from him who rules the heavens and earth:
A creature glorious to the gods on high,
Whose mansion is yon everlasting sky.
Driven by despiteful wrong she takes her seat
In lowly grief at Jove’s eternal feet.
There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend:
[62]So rue the nations when their kings offend:
When uttering wiles and brooding thoughts of ill,
They bend the laws and wrest them to their will.
Oh gorged with gold! ye kingly judges hear!
Make straight your paths: your crooked judgments fear:
That the foul record may no more be seen,
Erased, forgotten, as it ne’er had been!
He wounds himself that aims another’s wound:
His evil counsels on himself rebound.
Jove at his awful pleasure looks from high
With all-discerning and all-knowing eye;
Nor hidden from its ken what injured right
Within the city-walls eludes the light.
Or oh! if evil wait the righteous deed,
If thus the wicked gain the righteous meed,
Then may not I, nor yet my son remain
In this our generation just in vain!
But sure my hope, not this doth Heaven approve,
Not this the work of thunder-darting Jove.
Deep let my words, oh Perses! graven be:
Hear Justice, and renounce th’ oppressor’s plea:
This law the wisdom of the god assign’d
To human race and to the bestial kind:
To birds of air and fishes of the wave,
And beasts of earth, devouring instinct gave
In them no justice lives: he bade be known
This better sense to reasoning man alone.
Who from the seat of judgment shall impart
The truths of knowledge utter’d from his heart;
On him the god of all-discerning eye
[63]Pours down the treasures of felicity.
Who sins against the right, his wilful tongue
With perjuries of lying witness hung;
Lo! he is hurt beyond the hope of cure:
Dark is his race, nor shall his name endure.
Who fears his oath shall leave a name to shine
With brightening lustre through his latest line.
Most foolish Perses! let the truths I tell,
Which spring from knowledge, in thy bosom dwell:
Lo! wickednesses rife in troops appear;
[64]Smooth is the track of vice, the mansion near:
On virtue’s path delays and perils grow:
The gods have placed before [65]the sweat that bathes the brow:
And ere the foot can reach her high abode,
Long, rugged, steep th’ ascent, and rough the road.
The ridge once gain’d, the path so rude of late
Runs easy on, and level to the gate.
Far best is he whom conscious wisdom guides;
Who first and last the right and fit decides:
He too is good, that [66]to the wiser friend
His docile reason can submissive bend:
But worthless he that reason’s voice defies,
Nor wise himself, nor duteous to the wise.
But thou, oh Perses! what my words impart
Let mem’ry bind for ever on thy heart.
[67]Oh son of Dios! labour evermore,
That hunger turn abhorrent from thy door;
That Ceres blest, with spiky garland crown’d,
Greet thee with love and bid thy barns abound.
[68]Still on the sluggard hungry want attends,
The scorn of man, the hate of heaven impends:
While he, averse from labour, drags his days,
Yet greedy on the gain of others preys:
Even as the stingless drones devouring seize
With glutted sloth the harvest of the bees.
Love ev’ry seemly toil, that so the store
Of foodful seasons heap thy garner’s floor.
From labour men returns of wealth behold;
Flocks in their fields and in their coffers gold:
From labour shalt thou with the love be blest
Of men and gods; the slothful they detest.
Not toil, but sloth shall ignominious be;
Toil, and the slothful man shall envy thee;
Shall view thy growing wealth with alter’d sense,
For glory, virtue walk with opulence.
Thou, like a god, since labour still is found
The better part, shalt live belov’d, renown’d;
If, as I counsel, thou thy witless mind,
Though weak and empty as the veering wind,
From others’ coveted possessions turn’d,
To thrift compel, and food by labour earn’d.
[69]Shame, which our aid or injury we find,
Shame to the needy clings of evil kind;
Shame to low indigence declining tends:
Bold zeal to wealth’s proud pinnacle ascends.
[70]But shun extorted riches; oh far best
The heaven-sent wealth without reproach possest.
Whoe’er shall mines of hoarded gold command,
By fraudful tongue or by rapacious hand;
As oft betides when lucre lights the flame,
And shamelessness expels the better shame;
Him shall the god cast down, in darkness hurl’d,
His name, his offspring wasted from the world:
The goods for which he pawn’d his soul decay,
The breath and shining bubble of a day.
Alike the man of sin is he confest,
[71]Who spurns the suppliant and who wrongs the guest;
Who climbs, by lure of stolen embraces led,
With ill-timed act, a brother’s marriage bed;
Who dares by crafty wickedness abuse
His trust, and robs the orphans of their dues;
Who, on the threshold of afflictive age,
His hoary parent stings with taunting rage:
On him shall Jove in anger look from high,
And deep requite the dark iniquity:
But wholly thou from these refrain thy mind,
Weak as it is, and wavering as the wind.
With thy best means perform the ritual part,
Outwardly pure and spotless at the heart,
And on thy altar let unblemish’d thighs
In fragrant savour to th’ immortals rise.
Or thou in other sort may’st well dispense
Wine-offerings and the smoke of frankincense,
Ere on the nightly couch thy limbs be laid;
Or when the stars from sacred sun-rise fade.
So shall thy piety accepted move
Their heavenly natures to propitious love:
Ne’er shall thy heritage divided be,
But others part their heritage to thee.
Let friends oft bidden to thy feast repair;
Let not a foe the social moment share.
Chief to thy open board the neighbour call:
When, unforeseen, domestic troubles fall,
The neighbour runs ungirded; kinsmen wait,
And, lingering for their raiment, hasten late.
As the good neighbour is our prop and stay,
So is the bad a pit-fall in our way.
Thus blest or curs’d, we this or that obtain,
The first a blessing and the last a bane.
How should thine ox by chance untimely die?
The evil neighbour looks and passes by.
[72]If aught thou borrowest, well the measure weigh;
The same good measure to thy friend repay,
Or more, if more thou canst, unask’d concede,
So shall he prompt supply thy future need.
Usurious gains avoid; usurious gain,
Equivalent to loss, will prove thy bane.
[73]Who loves thee, love; him woo that friendly wooes:
Give to the giver, but to him refuse
That giveth not; their gifts the generous earn;
But none bestows where never is return.
Munificence is blest: by heaven accurst
Extortion, of death-dealing plagues the worst.
Who bounteous gives though large his bounty flow,
Shall feel his heart with inward rapture glow:
Th’ extortioner of bold unblushing sin,
Though small the plunder, feels a thorn within.
If with a little thou a little blend
Continual, mighty shall the heap ascend.
Who bids his gather’d substance gradual grow
Shall see not livid hunger’s face of woe.
No bosom-pang attends the home-laid store,
But rife with loss the food without thy door:
’Tis good to take from hoards, and pain to need
What is far from thee: give the precept heed.
When broach’d or at the lees, no care be thine
To save the cask, but [74]spare the middle wine.
To him the friend that serves thee glad dispense
With bounteous hand the meed of recompense.
Not on a brother’s plighted word rely,
But, [75]as in laughter, set a witness by;
Mistrust destroys us and credulity.
Let no fair woman tempt thy sliding mind
[76]With garment gather’d in a knot behind;
She [77]prattling with gay speech inquires thy home;
But trust a woman, and a thief is come.
One only son his father’s house may tend,
And e’en with one domestic hoards ascend:
Then mayst thou leave a second son behind:
For many sons from heaven shall wealth obtain;
The care is greater, greater is the gain.
Do thus: if riches be thy soul’s desire,
By toils on toils to this thy hope aspire.