Thus far the tilth of fields and stars of heaven;Now will I sing thee, Bacchus, and, with thee, The forest's young plantations and the fruit Of slow-maturing olive. Hither haste, O Father of the wine-press; all things here Teem with the bounties of thy hand; for thee With viny autumn laden blooms the field, And foams the vintage high with brimming vats;Hither, O Father of the wine-press, come, And stripped of buskin stain thy bared limbs In the new must with me.
First, nature's law For generating trees is manifold;For some of their own force spontaneous spring, No hand of man compelling, and possess The plains and river-windings far and wide, As pliant osier and the bending broom, Poplar, and willows in wan companies With green leaf glimmering gray; and some there be From chance-dropped seed that rear them, as the tall Chestnuts, and, mightiest of the branching wood, Jove's Aesculus, and oaks, oracular Deemed by the Greeks of old. With some sprouts forth A forest of dense suckers from the root, As elms and cherries; so, too, a pigmy plant, Beneath its mother's mighty shade upshoots The bay-tree of Parnassus. Such the modes Nature imparted first; hence all the race Of forest-trees and shrubs and sacred groves Springs into verdure.
Other means there are, Which use by method for itself acquired.
One, sliving suckers from the tender frame Of the tree-mother, plants them in the trench;One buries the bare stumps within his field, Truncheons cleft four-wise, or sharp-pointed stakes;Some forest-trees the layer's bent arch await, And slips yet quick within the parent-soil;No root need others, nor doth the pruner's hand Shrink to restore the topmost shoot to earth That gave it being. Nay, marvellous to tell, Lopped of its limbs, the olive, a mere stock, Still thrusts its root out from the sapless wood, And oft the branches of one kind we see Change to another's with no loss to rue, Pear-tree transformed the ingrafted apple yield, And stony cornels on the plum-tree blush.
Come then, and learn what tilth to each belongs According to their kinds, ye husbandmen, And tame with culture the wild fruits, lest earth Lie idle. O blithe to make all Ismarus One forest of the wine-god, and to clothe With olives huge Tabernus! And be thou At hand, and with me ply the voyage of toil I am bound on, O my glory, O thou that art Justly the chiefest portion of my fame, Maecenas, and on this wide ocean launched Spread sail like wings to waft thee. Not that I With my poor verse would comprehend the whole, Nay, though a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths Were mine, a voice of iron; be thou at hand, Skirt but the nearer coast-line; see the shore Is in our grasp; not now with feigned song Through winding bouts and tedious preludings Shall I detain thee.
Those that lift their head Into the realms of light spontaneously, Fruitless indeed, but blithe and strenuous spring, Since Nature lurks within the soil. And yet Even these, should one engraft them, or transplant To well-drilled trenches, will anon put of Their woodland temper, and, by frequent tilth, To whatso craft thou summon them, make speed To follow. So likewise will the barren shaft That from the stock-root issueth, if it be Set out with clear space amid open fields:
Now the tree-mother's towering leaves and boughs Darken, despoil of increase as it grows, And blast it in the bearing. Lastly, that Which from shed seed ariseth, upward wins But slowly, yielding promise of its shade To late-born generations; apples wane Forgetful of their former juice, the grape Bears sorry clusters, for the birds a prey.
Soothly on all must toil be spent, and all Trained to the trench and at great cost subdued.
But reared from truncheons olives answer best, As vines from layers, and from the solid wood The Paphian myrtles; while from suckers spring Both hardy hazels and huge ash, the tree That rims with shade the brows of Hercules, And acorns dear to the Chaonian sire:
So springs the towering palm too, and the fir Destined to spy the dangers of the deep.
But the rough arbutus with walnut-fruit Is grafted; so have barren planes ere now Stout apples borne, with chestnut-flower the beech, The mountain-ash with pear-bloom whitened o'er, And swine crunched acorns 'neath the boughs of elms.
Nor is the method of inserting eyes And grafting one: for where the buds push forth Amidst the bark, and burst the membranes thin, Even on the knot a narrow rift is made, Wherein from some strange tree a germ they pen, And to the moist rind bid it cleave and grow.
Or, otherwise, in knotless trunks is hewn A breach, and deep into the solid grain A path with wedges cloven; then fruitful slips Are set herein, and- no long time- behold!
To heaven upshot with teeming boughs, the tree Strange leaves admires and fruitage not its own.
Nor of one kind alone are sturdy elms, Willow and lotus, nor the cypress-trees Of Ida; nor of self-same fashion spring Fat olives, orchades, and radii And bitter-berried pausians, no, nor yet Apples and the forests of Alcinous;Nor from like cuttings are Crustumian pears And Syrian, and the heavy hand-fillers.
Not the same vintage from our trees hangs down, Which Lesbos from Methymna's tendril plucks.
Vines Thasian are there, Mareotids white, These apt for richer soils, for lighter those:
Psithian for raisin-wine more useful, thin Lageos, that one day will try the feet And tie the tongue: purples and early-ripes, And how, O Rhaetian, shall I hymn thy praise?
Yet cope not therefore with Falernian bins.
Vines Aminaean too, best-bodied wine, To which the Tmolian bows him, ay, and king Phanaeus too, and, lesser of that name, Argitis, wherewith not a grape can vie For gush of wine-juice or for length of years.
Nor thee must I pass over, vine of Rhodes, Welcomed by gods and at the second board, Nor thee, Bumastus, with plump clusters swollen.
