103But when the swarms fly aimlessly and play in the sky, scorning the combs and leaving their hives cold, you will keep their fickle spirits from idle play. 106Nor is it great labour to keep them: tear off the kings' wings; 107while they linger no one will dare to take the high road or pluck the standards from the camp. 109Let gardens fragrant with saffron flowers invite them, and let the guardianship of Hellespontine Priapus, watchman against thieves and birds with his willow sickle, protect them. 112Let him who cares for such things himself bring thyme and pines from the high mountains and plant them widely around their dwellings; 114let him wear his own hand with hard toil, himself set fruitful plants in the ground and water them with friendly showers.
Vergil · Georgics
Georgics 4.103–115
Keeping swarms at home
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Vergil, Georgics. Latin text: J. B. Greenough, The Bucolics, Aeneid, and Georgics of Virgil (Boston, 1881), public domain; digital text from the Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA. Word analysis: drafted by our own tagger (trained on the hand-checked texts on this site), with every doubtful word checked by hand. English translation and section titles: written for this app, each checked against the Latin by a second reader.