43In early spring, when the cold moisture melts on the white mountains and the crumbling clod loosens itself to the West Wind, even then let my bull begin to groan over the deep-driven plough, and the ploughshare to shine, rubbed bright by the furrow. 47That crop at last answers the prayers of the greedy farmer which has twice felt the sun, twice the cold; 49its immense harvests have burst the granaries. 50But before we cut an unknown plain with iron, let it be our care to learn beforehand the winds and the changing temper of the sky, and the ancestral tillage and character of the places, and what each region will bear and what each refuses.
54Here crops, there grapes come up more happily; elsewhere the young growth of trees, and grasses grow green unbidden. 56Do you not see how Tmolus sends saffron scents, India ivory, the soft Sabaeans their own frankincense, but the naked Chalybes iron, Pontus the rank castor, Epirus the mares that win palms at Elis? 60From the first, nature laid these laws and everlasting covenants on fixed places, from the time when Deucalion first threw stones into the empty world, from which men were born, a hard race. 63Come then: let strong bulls turn over the rich soil of the earth straight away from the first months of the year, and let dusty summer bake the clods as they lie with its ripening suns; 67but if the land is not fertile, it will be enough to raise it in a shallow furrow just at the rising of Arcturus: there, so that weeds may not hinder the glad crops; here, so that the scant moisture may not desert the barren sand.