475But as for me, may the Muses, sweet above all things, whose sacred emblems I bear, struck with a mighty love, receive me first and show me the paths of heaven and the stars, the various eclipses of the sun and the labours of the moon; 479whence comes the trembling of the earth, by what force the deep seas swell, bursting their barriers, and sink back again into themselves, why winter suns hasten so much to dip themselves in Ocean, or what delay hinders the slow nights. 483But if the cold blood about my heart prevents me from reaching these parts of nature, let the countryside and the streams that water the valleys please me; may I love the rivers and the woods, inglorious.
486O for those plains, and Spercheus, and Taygetus, where Spartan maidens revel for Bacchus! 488O for someone to set me in the cool valleys of Haemus and shelter me with the vast shade of branches! 490Happy he who has been able to learn the causes of things, and has trampled underfoot all fears and inexorable fate and the roar of greedy Acheron. 493Fortunate too is he who knows the country gods, Pan and old Silvanus and the sister Nymphs: him the people's rods of office do not sway, nor the purple of kings, nor discord driving faithless brothers, nor the Dacian coming down from the conspiring Danube, nor the affairs of Rome and kingdoms doomed to perish; 498nor has he grieved in pity for the poor or envied the man who has; he has plucked the fruits which the branches, which the willing fields themselves have borne of their own accord; 501nor has he seen iron laws and the frenzied forum or the people's archives.
503Others vex unknown seas with oars and rush upon the sword, and make their way into courts and the doorways of kings; 505one seeks to destroy a city and its wretched household gods, so that he may drink from a jewel and sleep on Sarranian purple; 507another hoards wealth and broods over buried gold; 508this one stares awestruck at the Rostra; 508that one, gaping, the applause along the benches — for it rolls again and again, from people and senators alike — has carried away; 510they rejoice, steeped in their brothers' blood, and exchange homes and sweet thresholds for exile, and seek a fatherland lying beneath another sun. 513The farmer has cleft the earth with his curved plough: from this comes the year's labour, from this he sustains his country and his little grandchildren, from this his herds of cattle and deserving bullocks.
516Nor is there any rest, but the year teems either with fruits or with the young of the flock or with sheaves of Ceres' stalk, and loads the furrows with increase and overflows the barns.