The Georgics

In four books of verse, Virgil writes a poem about farming: the first on ploughing, crops and the signs of the weather, the second on trees and vines, the third on cattle and horses, and the fourth on bees and their ordered society. Through the practical advice runs a celebration of the Italian countryside and of honest labour, and the poem ends with the myth of Orpheus, who went down to the underworld to bring back his wife Eurydice and lost her by looking back.

Virgil wrote the Georgics between about 37 and 29 BC, after Rome's civil wars, as a call to restore the land, and John Dryden called it 'the best poem of the best poet'. This translation is by James Rhoades. Read Virgil's Aeneid and his Eclogues.