“Come, Father Bacchus, come! thy bounty fills All things around; for thee the autumn hills, Heavy with fruit, blush through their greenery; In the full vats the vintage foams for thee: Come, Father Bacchus, come! nor yet refuse To doff thy buskins, and with noble juice To stain thy limbs, and tread the grapes with me.” But although the poet makes the labours of the gardener and the vine-dresser the burden of his song, his most brilliant passages, and those best known and remembered, are the frequent digressions in which he breaks away from the lower ground of horticultural details into a higher poetical atmosphere. One of the most beautiful is his apostrophe to Italy in this second book:-- “Colchian bulls with fiery nostrils never turned Italian field, Seed of hydra’s teeth ne’er sprang in bristling crop of spear and shield; But thy slopes with heavy corn-stalks and the Massic vine are clad, There the olive-groves are greenest, and the full-fed herds are glad. In thy plains is bred the war-horse, tossing high its crest of pride; Milk-white herds, O fair Clitumnus, bathe them in thy sacred tide-- Mighty bulls to crown the altars, or to draw the conqueror’s car Up the Sacred Way in triumph when he rideth from the war. Here the spring is longest, summer borrows months beyond her own; Twice the teeming flocks are fruitful, twice the laden orchards groan. In thy plains no tigers wander, nor the lions nurse their young; Evil root of treacherous poison doth no wretched gatherer wrong, Never serpent rears its crest, or drags its monstrous coils along. Lo! where rise thy noble cities, giant works of men of old, Towns on beetling crags piled heavenward by the hands of builders bold-- Antique towers round whose foundations still the grand old rivers glide, And the double sea that girds thee like a fence on either side. * * * * * Such the land which sent to battle Marsian footmen stout and good, Sabine youth, and Volscian spearmen, and Liguria’s hardy brood; Hence have sprung our Decii, Marii, mighty names which all men bless, Great Camillus, kinsmen Scipios, sternest men in battle’s press! Hence hast thou too sprung, great Cæsar, whom the farthest East doth fear, So that Mede nor swarthy Indian to our Roman lines come near! Hail, thou fair and fruitful mother, land of ancient Saturn, hail! Rich in crops and rich in heroes! thus I dare to wake the tale Of thine ancient laud and honour, opening founts that slumbered long, Rolling through our Roman towns the echoes of old Hesiod’s song.”[9]