Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/60

52 praise, his brows wreathed with twisted oak, he move in rude dances and chant her hymn.

And these things that we might avail to learn by sure tokens, the heats and the rains and the winds that bring cold weather, our Lord himself hath ordained what the moon in her month should foreshadow, at what sign the south wind should drop, what husbandmen should often mark and keep their cattle nearer the farmyard. Straightway when gales are gathering, either the seaways begin to shudder and heave, and a dry roaring to be heard on the mountain heights, or the far-echoing beaches to stir, and a rustling swell through the woodland. Even in that hour the rude surge spares not the curving hull, when gulls fly swiftly back from mid ocean and press screaming shoreward, or when sea-coot play on dry land, and the heron leaves his home in the marshes and soars high above the mist. Often likewise when a gale is toward wilt thou see shooting stars glide down the sky, and through the darkness of night long trails of flame glimmer in their track: often light chaff and fallen leaves flutter in air, or floating feathers dance on the water's surface. But when it lightens from the fierce northern regions, and when Eurus and Zephyrus thunder through their hall, the whole countryside is afloat with brimming ditches, and every mariner at sea furls his soaking sails. Never is rain on us unwarned: either as it gathers in the valley bottoms the crane soars high in flight before it; or the heifer gazing up into the sky