Page:Virgil - The Georgics, Thomas Nevile, 1767.djvu/95

 Book III. But folds entire with ruthless rage embrace,

The young, and old, and root out all the race.

This the proud Alps still witness to the sight,

And Noric castles on the hilly height,

Timavus' meads, wide desolated plains,

And realms ev'n yet forsaken by their swains.

Here from sick air a Plague once took her birth,

And thro' Autumnal heats wax'd hot on earth,

On cattle, beasts of prey destruction spread,

And on the lakes and herb her poison shed.

Death strange and new! when, circling thro' the heart,

The scorching thirst had shrivel'd ev'ry part,

Ooz'd a lean liquor, that by slow degrees

Melted the bones, half-putrid with disease.

Oft in the middle of the rites divine,

As at the altar with the snowy twine

The Priests prepare the fillet to surround,

The victim, agonizing, to the ground

Drops; or before the shrine if timely led

By holy hands the sacrifice had bled,

No flames aspiring from the fibres rise,

Nor can the Seer consulted give replies;

The slaught'ring steel with blood is faintly stain'd,

And a thin ichor clouds the topmost sand. Hence