And worn in many a chink the surface part:
There builds the field-mouse underneath the ground,
And loads her little barn with plunder crowned;
There works the mole along her dark abode,
There in its hollow lurks the lonely toad,
There wastes the weevil with insatiate rage,
There the wise ant that dreads the wants of age.”
Arboriculture is treated minutely in the second book, the vine receiving the principal share of attention. Here we have the most beautiful of those digressions which lend an enchanting variety to the style of the Georgics—the poet’s glowing eulogy of his native land.
PRAISES OF ITALY.
“Yet nor the Median groves, nor rivers, rolled,