So when two lordly bulls, with equal toil,
Force the bright ploughshare through the fallow soil,
Join’d to one yoke the stubborn earth they tear,
And trace large furrows with the shining share:
O’er their huge limbs the foam descends in snow
And streams of sweat down their sour foreheads flow.
A similar picture is given in the ‘Georgics.’
While mountain-snows dissolve against the sun,
And streams yet new from precipices run,
Ev’n in this early dawning of the year