Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/94

86 shut indoors by the rich farmyard; for the female gradually wastes his strength and consumes him in gazing and allows him not to remember woodland or meadow; yes and often her sweet allurements drive her proud lovers to let their horns decide the rivalry. On broad Sila grazes the shapely heifer: they join in violent battle and alternate the frequent wound; dark blood bathes their bodies and their crashing horns strain in confronting pressure, while forest and far-stretching sky echo back. Nor will the warriors herd together; but the conquered retires, and keeps exile afar in strange regions, making many a moan over his disgrace and the haughty conqueror's blows and his love's loss unavenged; and gazing on the stall he quits his ancestral realm. Therefore with all diligence he trains his strength and lies nightlong on an unstrewn couch among flinty rocks, feeding on prickly leaves and sharp rushes; and tries himself, and learns to throw his rage into his horns by butting at a tree trunk, and buffets the winds with blows, and scatters the sand in rehearsal of battle. Thereafter, in gathered might and strength renewed, he advances his standard and rushes headlong on his forgetful foe: as a billow beginning to whiten in mid ocean gathers a lengthening curve from the deep, and as rolling landward it thunders over the rocks and falls in very mountain mass, while the wave boils up eddying from the bottom and hurls the black shingle high up the beach.

Yes all on earth, the race of man and beast,