Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/56

48 of the signs may turn. The world, rising steeply towards Scythia and the Rhipean fortresses, sinks sloping to Libya and the south. This pole of ours is ever uplifted; but the other black Styx and the deep world of ghosts see underneath their feet. Here the enormous Serpent glides forth, wreathing his coils in fashion of a river around and between the two Bears, the Bears that dare not dip under the Ocean floor: there, one saith, either dead night is soundless, and the gloom thickens in night's perpetual pall, or Dawn returns from us and leads back the day; and when day-spring touches us with his panting horses' breath, there crimson Hesperus kindles his lamp at evenfall. Hence can we foreknow the changeful sky's seasons, hence the day of harvest and the time of sowing, and when it befits to drive our oars through the treacherous sparkling sea, when to launch armed fleets, or in due season lay low the woodland pine.

Neither in vain do we mark the signs in their dawning and decease, and the four seasons that make equal division of the year. Whensoever chilly rain keeps the husbandman indoors, many a thing, which must else be hurried through in clear weather afterward, may be done at leisure; the ploughman beats out the stubborn point of his blunted share; one hollows troughs out of the tree; one marks the stamp on the flock or the figures for the granary-heaps; others sharpen stakes and forked poles, and sort Amerian bands for the trailing vine. Now let the basket be lightly woven of