Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/69

ll. 53–107.] skyward in breadth of prosperous boughs, and marvels in strange leafage and fruits not her own.

Furthermore, not single in kind are either strong elms or willow and lotus, or cypresses of Ida; nor in a single likeness is born the fat olive, the ball and the spindle-shaped, and the pausian with bitter berry, nor apples in Alcinous' orchards; nor does the same twig bear Crustumian and Syrian pears and the heavy wardens. Not the same is the vintage that trails from trees of ours, and that which Lesbos gathers from the branch of Methymna: there are Thasian and there are pale Mareotic vines, these meet for a rich, those for a lighter soil; and the Psithian more serviceable for raisin-wine, and the thin Lagean that in her day will trip the feet and tie the tongue; and the purple and the earlier grape; and in what verse may I tell of thee, O Rhaetian? yet not even so vie thou with Falernian vaults. Likewise there are Aminaean vines, theirs the soundest wine of all, for which the Tmolian and even the royal Phanaean make room; and the lesser Argitis, that none other may rival whether in abundant flow or in lasting through length of years. Let me not pass thee by, O Rhodian, well-beloved of gods and festal boards, and Bumastus with thy swelling clusters. But there is no tale of the manifold kinds or of the names they bear, nor truly were the tale worth reckoning out; whoso will know it, let him choose to learn likewise how many grains of sand eddy in the west wind on the plain of Libya, or to count, when the violent East sweeps