And He, the Father, girt in midnight clouds,
Hurls with an arm of fire his thunderbolts;
And the great world doth quake; and wild beasts flee
And hearts of human folk sink low with fear.
And when with flaming brand He strikes the peak Of Athos, Rhodope, or high Ceraun,
The winds redouble and the storm apace
Thickens; and now the woodland, now the shore
Wails with each giant blast in agony.
And since this dread is ever thine, watch well
The seasons of the heavens and their signs;
What coign of space cold Saturn's star affects:
Along what orbit fiery Mercury roams.
And most of all adore the gods; and, when
Late winter wanes and gentle spring is here,
Haste in some pleasant mead to celebrate
Those yearly rites which mighty Ceres claims.
For wine is ripest then, and lambs are fat;
And sweet is sleep amidst well-shaded hills.
So call thy country youth and bid them pray
To Ceres for thee; blending to her joy
Milk and the honeycomb and mellow wine.
And three times let the kindly victim go
Round the green corn, and all thy merry band
Shout as they follow, calling Ceres down
Nor when the harvest comes
Let any put his sickle to the awn,
Ere crowned with oaken leaves he join in song
And rustic dance to do our Ceres grace.
And that we might foretell by certain signs,
Or heat, or rain, or winds that speed the frost,
The mighty Father has himself ordained
The warnings of the moon month after month:
What tokens mark the lull of southern blasts;
And what the signals-noted oft-that bid
The farmer keep his cattle nigh the byre.
See, when a gale springs up, how on the nonce
The instant anger of the troubled deep
Foams in the friths and all the mountains ring
With clang and crash; meanwhile the distant shore
Throbs with tumultuous echoes, and anon
A murmurous crowd of voices fills the woods.
And now the billows scarce can stay their dash
On hull and keel, what time the speedy gulls
Wing screaming from mid-ocean to the shore,
The sea-fowl make a playground of the glebe,
The herons flying from their fenny haunts
Float high above the clouds.
Full often, when the wind is close at hand,
The stars themselves shoot headlong from the sky,
And as they trail their long-drawn tracks of flame
Silver the sable night. Often again
Dead leaf and flimsy chaff fly here and there,
Or frolic feathers skim across the wave.
But when the region of the truculent North
Blazes with lightning, and the thunder shakes
Eurus' and Zephyr's dwelling-place alike,
Then dykes are full and all the country-side
Swims with the flood, and mariners at sea
Furl their wet sails.
Strike any man unwarned: or he might note
Cloud-loving cranes, when storms begin to brew,
Swoop to the abysmal shelter of the vale,
Or mark the heifer gazing at the sky
With broadening nostrils scent the troubled air.
Or flashing swallow flit around the mere,
Or in the marsh frogs chant their ancient plaint.
And many a time the thrifty emmet bears.
Out of her secret store-houses her eggs
By narrow well-worn pathways, or on high
A giant rainbow drinks the dew, or now
The army of the rooks with serried wings
Jangle and jar as in a long array
They quit their feeding-grounds.
Tribes of the sea-fowl (such as quest for food
In Asian fields near Cayster's pleasant pools),
And jostle one another as they crowd
To toss the dewdrop water plenteously
Over their feathered sides, and now they dip
Their heads beneath the waves, and now they run Into the tide, and revel in their bath
The impish raven stalk the shore apart
And with a mighty caw invoke the rain.
Even the maidens working round the lamp
O' nights foretell the tempest, when the oil
Sputters and sparkles and great mushroom growths
Gather along the wick.
The signs of cloudless calms and sunny skies
Than the storm heralds: for the stars shall show
Like chiselled discs, and the moon rise unstained
By any borrowed splendour of the sun,
Nor lank cloud-fleeces float across the sky;
Nor Thetis' darling fowl, the Halcyons,'
Towards the waning sunlight on the shore
Unfurl their wings, and the uncleanly swine
Forget to toss their litter to and fro.
The mist descends and broods along the plain,
The owl on the gable keeps her sunset watch
And plagues the night with ineffectual hoot.
And on the crystal air there soars in sight
Nisus, and she who chastisement must reap,
Scylla, for rapine of the purple lock ;
And wheresoever with her fugitive wings
She cleaves the breeze, lo! on the wind there sails
With shrilly clamour close upon her track
Nisus the foe, Nisus the terrible;
And wheresoever Nisus mounts the wind,
Lo! Scylla flutters as with fugitive wings
She cleaves the breeze.
The rooks in bated tones
Thrice and again repeat a softened note,
The Halcyons or kingfishers were, according to the ancients, sea-birds: hence they might well be called the darlings of Thetis, who was a daughter of Nereus, and one of the sea deities herself.
2 Nisus was King of Megara, to which place Minos laid siege; Scylla, the daughter of Nisus, having fallen in love with Minos, determined to assist his cause by cutting off from her father's head a certain purple lock of hair, which was his charm against death. This she accomplished as he slept, and accordingly Nisus died and Megara was taken. The conqueror Minos, however, refused to reward the crime of the treacherous Scylla, and caused her to be drowned. Nisus was changed into an osprey or sea-eagle, and Scylla became a small hawk known as Ciris. The fable is told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. Whether Virgil meant by this passage to emphasise allegorically the fact that at this season the larger birds chase their smaller and weaker brethren, or whether he intends simply to introduce the personalities of the metamorphosed father and daughter, does not seem quite clear.
And you shall hear them in their roost above
Chattering to one another in the leaves,
Thrilled with I know not what mysterious charm.
And the storm spent, how gleefully they hie
Home to their callow youngsters in the nests.
And this they do, methinks, not that the gods
Have portioned them some special gift, or fate
Bestowed a deeper sense of things to be:
But, when the storm and fitful mists of heaven
Shift in their course and Jove with gale and shower
Contracts the rarer atoms and makes rare
The dense, then do their spirits suffer change,
And other pulses stir their hearts awhile,
Other than when the wind-tost clouds were rife.
And thence the wild birds' chorus in the fields,
And thence the gladness of the kine, and thence
The Pean of the rooks.
And the procession of the moons watch well,
So shall the moon not fool you, nor the night
Trap with her tranquil snares.
For if the moon
With a blurred crescent frame the darkling air,
Ploughmen and mariners, be warned in time:
A mighty rain is nigh; but if her face
Maidenlike mantles with a blush, the wind
Is near; since always Phoebe's tender gold
Turns ruby in the wind. Ye well may trust
The counsel her fourth birthday brings, and if
Pure and unstained she sail across the sky
With flawless crescent, lo! that live-long day,
Ay, and the days that it begets, shall pass
Windless and rainless till the month be gone,
And sailors safe on shore to Panope,
Glaucus and Melicertes, Ino's son,
Shall pay their vows.
And signs the sun shall give
Orient, and when he plunges in the waves;
The surest signs attend the sun, or those
He brings with early morn or with the stars.
When, shrouded in the mist, a demi-orb,
* Glaucus, a son of Neptune, was a fisherman; Panope was a Nereid; Melicertes was the son of Athamas, King of Thebes, and Ino, daughter cf Cadmus. Glaucus, Panope, and Melicertes all subsequently became sea deities.
He flecks with dappled hues the birth of day,
Beware the rain; for speeding from the sea,
Comes Notus, foe to branch and blade and beast.
Or when his morning rays loom through a mass
Of riven cloud, or when the dawn appears
Pale from the saffron chamber of her lord,
Lo! sorry safeguard shall your vine leaves prove
To the ripe grape; so fierce the clattering hail
Shall dance upon the roofs.
Methinks, than all of these, his journey done,
> It boots to mark the fashion of his flight;
For often then do variant colours pass
Across his face; whereof a scarlet flame
Warns us of wind, and purple dusk of rain.
But if the dusk and crimson fire be blent,
Then rain and wind and storm alike shall rage
In universal broil; let no man say
That I should put to sea on such a night,
Or loose my cable from its anchorage.
But if, whene'er he gives us back the day
Or veils the gift again, his orb shine clear,
Then of a truth the clouds shall frown in vain,
And tree tops rustle in the bright north wind.
And so, in fine, what tale the twilight tells,
Or what fair breeze shall blow the clouds away,
Or what the purpose of the wet south wind,
All these the sun shall show. And who dare call
The sun false seer?
Nay, more, he oft proclaims
The march of black revolt, and the ferment
Of underground rebellion.
In pity for dead Cæsar 5 and for Rome,
Shrouded his splendour in a lurid gloom,
Whilst an apostate race looked on aghast
Dreading eternal night!
Those were the days
Of direful portents both from land and sea,
Ill-omened dogs, and birds of doom.
Did we not view the riven furnaces
4 Notus was the south wind.
5 This refers to the assassination of Julius Cæsar, 15th of March, B.C. 44. It appears that there was an eclipse of the sun in the subsequent November.
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