Page images
PDF
EPUB

Silvanus, carrying a young cypress, fresh torn up by its roots -gods and goddesses all, whose province is the guardianship of the country-both ye who foster the new-born produce that springs up unsown, and ye who send down on the sown crop plenteous rain from heaven. And thou, last not least, of whom we know not in what house of gods thou art in good. time to sit whether it be our Cæsar's pleasure to preside over cities and take charge of the earth, that so the vast world may welcome thee as the giver of its increase, and lord of its changeful seasons, crowning thy brows with thy mother's own myrtle; or whether thy coming shall be as the god of the unmeasured sea, the sole power to claim the seaman's homage, with furthest Thule for thy handmaid, and Tethys, buying thee for her daughter with the dower of all her waves; or whether thou art to give us a new star to quicken our lazy months, just where a space opens itself between Erigone and the Claws that come next in order :-see, there is the fiery Scorpion, already drawing in his arms for thee, and leaving thee more than thy fair share of the sky. Whatever thy future place for let not Tartarus hope to have thee for its king, nor mayest thou ever feel so monstrous an ambition; though Greece see charms in her Elysian fields, and Proserpine, spite of her mother's journey, refuse to follow her back to earth-vouchsafe me a smooth course, and smile on my bold endeavours, and in pity, like mine, for the countryman as he wanders blind and unguided, assume the god, and attune thine ear betimes to the voice of prayer.

In the dawn of spring, when icy streams trickle melting from the hoar mountains, and the crumbling clod breaks its chain at the west wind's touch, even then I would fain see the plough driven deep till the bull groans again, and the share rubbed in the furrow till it shines. That is the .cornfield to give an answer, full though late, to the grasping

farmer's prayer, which has twice been laid bare to summer heat, and twice to winter cold-that is the corn-field to burst the barns with its unmeasured crop. Before, however, our share breaks the crust of an unknown soil, our care should be to understand the winds, and the divers humours of the sky, and the traditional culture and habitude of the land, what each clime produces and what each disowns. Here you see corn crops, there grapes have kindlier growth: other spots are green with the young of trees and grass that comes unbidden. Only see how it is Tmolus that sends us its saffron fragrance, India its ivory, the soft Arab his frankincense, the naked Chalybs, again, his iron, Pontus its potent castor, Epirus the prizes of the mares of Elis! Such is the chain of law, such the eternal covenant with which Nature has bound certain climes, from the day when Deucalion first hurled his stones on the unpeopled earth-stones, whence sprang man's race; hard as they. Come, then, and let your rich soil, soon as ever the year begins, be turned up by the bullock's strength-let the clods be exposed for Summer to bake them to dust with its full mellow suns; but if the land be not fertile, be content to wait till Arcturus, and then just raise the surface with a shallow furrow-in the one case, that à luxuriant crop may not be choked with weeds; in the other, that the barren seed may not lose the little moisture it has.

[ocr errors]

Moreover, in alternate years, you will let your fields lie fallow after reaping, and suffer the scurf to harden on the inactive plain; or you will sow your golden spelt when another star arises; where you lately took off the rattling pods of a luxuriant bean crop, or the yield of the slender vetch and the bitter lupine's brittle stems and echoing jungle. For a plain is parched by a crop of flax; parched by the oat, parched by the poppy steeped in slumberous Lethe. Yet rotation will lighten the strain; only think of the dried-up

soil, and be not afraid to give it its fill of rich manure-think of the exhausted field, and fling about the grimy ashes broadcast. Then, under the change of produce, the land gets equal rest, and you escape the thanklessness of an unploughed soil, Oft, too, has it been found of use to set a barren field on fire, and let the crackling flames burn up the light stubble: whether it be that the land derives hidden strength and fattening nourishment from the process, or that the fire bakes out any distemper it may have, and sweats out its superfluous moisture, or that the heat opens fresh passages and secret apertures through which life-juice may come to the tender blades, or that it makes the land harder, and binds up its gaping pores, that so the subtle shower and the fierce sun's unusual tyranny, and the north wind's searching cold may have no power to parch it to the quick. Great, aye, great are his services to the land who breaks up its sluggish clods with the harrow, and drags over them his wicker hurdles; the golden corn-goddess eyes him from her Olympian height with no idle regard; great, too, his, who having once broken through the land's crust, and made it lift its ridgy back, turns his plough, and drives through it a second time crosswise, and piles earth again and again, and bows her fields to his will.

A wet summer and a fine winter should be the farmer's prayer. From winter's dust comes great joy to the corn, joy to the land. No tillage gives Mysia such cause for boasting, or Gargarus for wondering at his own harvest. Why talk of the man who having cast his seed, follows up the blow with his rake, and levels the bare sandy ridges, and then when the corn is springing up, brings on it streaming waters, that follow as he leads; and when the scorched land is in a glow, and the corn blades dying-O joy! from the brow of the channelled slope entices the floods? See! down it tumbles, waking hoarse murmurs among the smooth stones, and allaying the

sun-struck ground as it bubbles on. Why talk of him, who in his care lest the weight of the ear should overbear the stems, grazes down the luxuriance of the crop while yet in the blade, when the springing corn has just reached the furrow's top; or of him, who drains off the whole watery contents of a marsh by absorbent sand—especially where, in the treacherous seasons, a river overflows, and covers whole acres with a coat of mud, making the hollow furrows steam again with the reeking moisture?

Before Jove's time never Even to set a mark on the

Do not think either, after all that the labour of man and beast has gone through in turning the soil over and over, that no harm is to be feared from the tormenting goose, the crane from the Strymon, or the bitter fibres of chicory; no injury from excess of shade. No, the wise Father of all has willed that the farmer's path should be no easy one. He was the first to break up the land by human skill, using care to sharpen men's wits, nor letting the realm he had made his own grow dull under the weight of lethargy. husbandman subdued the country. champaign or divide it with a boundary line was a thing unlawful. Men's gettings were for the common stock, and earth of her own free will produced everything, and that more freely than now, though none asked it of her. He it was that gave the black snake its baleful venom, and ordered the wolf to prowl and the sea to swell, stripped the leaves of their honey, and put the fire away, and stopped the wine that used to flow in common river-beds-that experience, through patient thought, might hammer out divers arts by slow degreesmight get at the corn blade by delving the furrow, and smite out from the heart of the flint the hidden fire. Then it was that the hollowed alder first touched the river-then the mariner numbered and named the stars-Pleiades, and Hyades, and Lycaon's glittering child, the Bear. Then men found how

to capture game with the noose, to beguile them with lime, and how to let their hounds round the mighty lawn's. And one man has learned already to flog a wide river with his casting net, making for the deep, while another is dragging his dripping meshes through the sea. Then came stubborn iron and the thin creaking saw-for the first men clove their wood with the wedge then came the divers arts of life. So Toil conquered the world, relentless Toil, and Want that grinds in adversity.

Ceres was the first to teach men to break up the earth with iron, in days when the sacred forests had begun to fall short in acorns and arbutes, and Dodona to withhold her sustenance. Soon, however, the wheat had plagues of its own-the baleful mildew was bidden to eat the stems, and the lazy thistle to set up its spikes in the fields. The crops begin to die, and a prickly jungle steals into their place, burrs, caltrops and the like; and among the glistening corn towers like a king the unkindly darnel and the unfruitful oat. So, unless your rake is ever ready to exterminate weeds, your shout to scare away birds, your hook to restrain the shade which darkens the land, and your prayers to call down rain, poor man, you will gaze on your neighbour's big heap of grain, with unavailing envy. Betake yourself to the woods again, and shake the oak to allay. your hunger.

I must tell you, too, what are the stout farmer's weapons of war, without whose aid none has ever sown or raised a crop. First the share, and the bent plough's heavy wood, and the slow lumbering wains of the mighty Mother of Eleusis, sledges and drags, and the rakes with their cruel weight, and the cheap wicker-work furniture of Celeus, bush-harrows of arbute twigs, and Iacchus' mystic fan-implements these which you will remember to store up long before the day of need, if you are destined to win and wear the full glories of the divine country..

« PreviousContinue »