Or should I celebrate the sea that laves Her upper shores and lower? or those broad lakes? Thee, Larius, greatest and, Benacus, thee With billowy uproar surging like the main? Or sing her harbours, and the barrier cast Athwart the Lucrine, and how ocean chafes With mighty bellowings, where the Julian wave Echoes the thunder of his rout, and through Avernian inlets pours the Tuscan tide? A land no less that in her veins displays Rivers of silver, mines of copper ore, Ay, and with gold hath flowed abundantly. A land that reared a valiant breed of men, The Marsi and Sabellian youth, and, schooled To hardship, the Ligurian, and with these The Volscian javelin-armed, the Decii too, The Marii and Camilli, names of might, The Scipios, stubborn warriors, ay, and thee, Great Caesar, who in Asia's utmost bounds With conquering arm e'en now art fending far The unwarlike Indian from the heights of Rome. Hail! land of Saturn, mighty mother thou Of fruits and heroes; 'tis for thee I dare Unseal the sacred fountains, and essay Themes of old art and glory, as I sing The song of Ascra through the towns of Rome. Now for the native gifts of various soils, What powers hath each, what hue, what natural bent For yielding increase. First your stubborn lands And churlish hill-sides, where are thorny fields Of meagre marl and gravel, these delight In long-lived olive-groves to Pallas dear. Take for a sign the plenteous growth hard by Of oleaster, and the fields strewn wide With woodland berries. But a soil that's rich, In moisture sweet exulting, and the plain That teems with grasses on its fruitful breast, Such as full oft in hollow mountain-dell We view beneath us- from the craggy heights Streams thither flow with fertilizing mud- A plain which southward rising feeds the fern By curved ploughs detested, this one day Shall yield thee store of vines full strong to gush In torrents of the wine-god; this shall be Fruitful of grapes and flowing juice like that We pour to heaven from bowls of gold, what time The sleek Etruscan at the altar blows His ivory pipe, and on the curved dish We lay the reeking entrails. If to rear Cattle delight thee rather, steers, or lambs, Or goats that kill the tender plants, then seek Full-fed Tarentum's glades and distant fields, Or such a plain as luckless Mantua lost Whose weedy water feeds the snow-white swan: There nor clear springs nor grass the flocks will fail, And all the day-long browsing of thy herds Shall the cool dews of one brief night repair. Land which the burrowing share shows dark and rich, With crumbling soil- for this we counterfeit In ploughing- for corn is goodliest; from no field More wains thou'lt see wend home with plodding steers; Or that from which the husbandman in spleen Has cleared the timber, and o'erthrown the copse That year on year lay idle, and from the roots Uptorn the immemorial haunt of birds; They banished from their nests have sought the skies; But the rude plain beneath the ploughshare's stroke