Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/96

88 Ascanius love leads them; they scale the mountain and swim the river. And all at once when their inward longing kindles into flame, (in spring the rather, since in spring their vital heat returns,) they all wheel and stand facing the West on rocky heights, and snuff the light breezes, and often without bodily union, wind-impregned, wonderful to tell, over crag and cliff and deep-sunken vale they scatter in flight not to thy springs, O East, nor to the rising of the sun, but towards the north and northwest winds, or whence the South issues wrapped in gloom and saddens heaven with his chilly rains. Then that clammy fluid, rightly named hippomanes in shepherds' language, oozes from their groin: the hippomanes that wicked stepmothers often gather, and mingle with herbs and baleful spells.

But time fleets meanwhile, fleets beyond recovery, while in loving enthralment we pass on and on. Enough now of cattle: half of our charge is left, the herding of fleecy flocks and rough she-goats. Here is work; hence look for praise, sturdy tillers of the soil. Nor am I of doubtful mind how hard it is to win all this in words, and crown things so slight with honour. But in fond desire I am rapt over Parnassus' lonely steeps, fain to pass along the hill where the trace of no earlier wheel winds down the soft slope to Castaly.

Now, august Pales, now must sound an ampler tone. In the beginning I ordain that sheep crop their fodder in the soft pens while leafy summer