Georgics: Book I excerpt – Virgil

Rain never takes men unawares:

either the cranes, airborne, fly before it, as it reaches

the valley’s depths, or a heifer looks up at the sky

and sniffs the air with nostrils spread,

or the swallows twitter circling the pools,

and the frogs in the mud croak their ancient lament.

And often the ant, beating out a narrow track,

brings eggs from an innermost nest, and a huge rainbow

drinks, and a great troop of rooks leaving the fields

beat their wings together densely, in ranks.

Then the cruel raven’s deep cry calls up the rain,

and, alone with himself, he walks the dry sands.

Even girls, spinning, at their nocturnal task, have not failed

to note the coming storm, seeing the oil sputter

in the fiery lamp, and a clot of soot gather on the wick.

No less, after rain, do we predict sunlight and clear skies,

and recognize fair weather by certain signs:

since the stars’ sharp edges are not obscured

and the Moon rises, not dimmed by her brother’s rays,

and thin fleecy clouds no longer drift across the sky:

But the mists seek out the valleys more, and settle

on the plains, and the owl, watching the sunset

from some high hill, gives out its twilight calls in vain.

Now the rooks repeat their clear calls, three or four times,

with narrowed throats, and often caw to themselves

in their high nests among the leaves, delighting

in some unusual pleasantry: they’re glad, the rain over,

to see their sweet nests and their little chicks again:

not that I think they have divine wisdom

or greater knowledge of the workings of Fate:

but when the weather changes, and the rain from fickle skies,

and Jupiter, among the wet South winds, makes what was now

rarefied, dense, and makes dense what was rarefied,

ideas in their minds alter, and their hearts feel differently,

differently to when the wind was chasing the clouds.

So that chorus of birds in the fields, the delight

of the cattle, the triumphant cries of the rooks.