Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/105

ll. 488–543.] bull drops down, spurts from his mouth mingled blood and foam, and heaves a last groan: sadly the ploughman advancing unyokes the bullock mourning his brother's death and leaves the plough stuck fast in mid-furrow. Not shades of stately groves, not soft meadows can stir his sense, not the river that curls brighter than amber over his rocks to seek the plain; but his deep flanks relax, his dull eyes are weighed down in stupor, and his neck sinks drooping heavily to earth. What avails his toil or his services? what that his ploughshare has upturned the ponderous clods? And yet no Massic bounty of the vine, no crowding banquets have done harm to these; they feed on leaves and simple pasture of grass, their cups are clear springs and racing rivers, nor does care break their healthful sleep. Then as never before they say that in that countryside oxen were to seek for Juno's rites, and chariots were drawn by ill-matched buffaloes to the high votive shrines. Therefore they wearily furrow earth with mattocks, and cover in the seed-corn with their own nails, and with straining necks drag their creaking wagons over the hill heights. No more does the wolf prowl ambush round the sheepfolds nor pace nightlong nigh the flocks; a fiercer care makes him tame. Shy fallow deer and timid stags now stray among the dogs and about the houses. Nay the brood of the infinite sea and all the tribe of swimming creatures lie on the verge of the strand like shipwrecked corpses in the wash of the wave, and seals take unwonted refuge in the rivers: and in the Rh