Page:Virgil - The Georgics, Thomas Nevile, 1767.djvu/110

 98 With cold the rifted rocks, and bound in frost

The gliding flood, ev'n then no time he lost;

But lopt th' Acanthus' foliage; nor would fail

To chide late Spring, and the slow western gale.

Hence in abundant swarms and teeming bees

He first would glory; from prest combs would squeeze

The frothy sweets: limes grac'd his scanty field,

And numerous pines; nor Autumn ceas'd to yield

Of fruitage to his wish as full a store,

As his rich boughs in earliest blossom bore.

Pear-trees, matur'd by age, he could dispose,

And elms, of riper growth, in order'd rows,

And thorns with plums then bending, and the plane,

Of shade to shelter Bacchus' social train.

But I forbear: confin'd in bounds too strait,

I quit the theme for others to relate.

Now learn the genius of the buzzing kind,

A gift and recompense by Jove assign'd,

When of arm'd priests by tinkling cymbals led

In the Dictæan den Heav'n's King they fed.

With them all lies in common; they alone

Of house and children property disown;

By settled laws direct their lives, and know

The joys a country and fixt seats bestow. They