Georgics 1.393–423

393No less, after rain, will you be able to foresee sunshine and open clear skies, and recognise them by sure signs: for then the stars' edge does not seem blunted, nor the Moon to rise indebted to her brother's rays, nor thin fleeces of wool to be borne across the sky; 398halcyons, dear to Thetis, do not spread their wings to the warm sun on the shore, filthy swine do not remember to toss loosened bundles of straw with their snouts. 401But the mists seek lower ground and lie on the plain, and the owl, watching the sunset from the topmost roof, plies her late song in vain. 404Nisus appears high in the clear air, and Scylla pays the penalty for the purple lock: wherever she flees, cutting the light air with her wings, look, hostile and fierce, with loud whirring through the breezes, Nisus pursues; 408where Nisus rises to the breezes, she, fleeing, swiftly cuts the light air with her wings. Then the ravens, with throats compressed, three or four times repeat their clear calls, and often in their lofty roosts, glad with some unaccustomed sweetness, chatter together among the leaves; 413they delight, when the rains are over, to revisit their little brood and sweet nests; 415not, I think, because they have intelligence from the gods or greater foresight of things from fate; 417but when the weather and the shifting moisture of the sky have changed their courses, and Jupiter, wet with south winds, thickens what was thin just now and loosens what was thick, the aspects of their minds are changed, and their breasts conceive other impulses now, others while the wind was driving the clouds: hence that chorus of birds in the fields, and the glad cattle, and the ravens exulting in their throats.