Page:Virgil - The Georgics, Thomas Nevile, 1767.djvu/19

 Book I.

With a year's rest your new-shorn field reward,

And give the glebe long leisure to grow hard:

At least, the season chang'd, there sow your corn,

Whence brittle stalks of lupines have been born

In rattling sheaves, or tares' thin seeds been took,

Or pulse, by reapers from their pods just shook.

For oats, and flax are found, and poppy-grain

Sprinkled with lethy'd sleep, to parch the plain.

But of alternate sowing light the toil,

If, by false shame not counsel'd, the dry soil

You feed with fatt'ning dung, and scatter round

A show'r of ashes on th' exhausted ground.

Thus change of grain gives respite to your field,

And lands at rest a rich return will yield.

Some with success by fire a poor soil mend,

And in a crackling blaze the stubble send:

Whether by means unknown earth thence receive

Strength, and some healing aliment conceive;

Or whether, purging the bad taint, the fire

Give the superfluous moisture to transpire;

Or into porous vents the glebe unbind,

Whence to the plants the juice a way may find;

Or, hardened by the fire's astrictive pow'rs,

Earth close her gaping chinks, lest drizzling show'rs, Or