Virgil

Who dare say the Sun is false?

Practice and thought might gradually forge many an art.

How lucky, if they know their happiness,

Are farmers, more than lucky, they for whom,

Far from the clash of arms, the earth herself,

Most fair in dealing, freely lavishes

An easy livelihood.

O farmers, pray that your summers be wet and your winters clear.

The fatter earth by handling we may find,

With ease distinguished from the meagre kind:

Poor soil will crumble into dust; the rich

Will to the fingers cleave like clammy pitch.

In youth alone, unhappy mortals live;

But, ah! the mighty bliss is fugitive:

Discolored sickness, anxious labor, come,

And age, and death's inexorable doom.

Bacchus loves open hills.

There is no place for death.

Thus by law of fate all things speed towards the worst, and slipping away fall back.

Look with favor upon a bold beginning.

[They] change their savage mind,

Their wildness lose, and, quitting nature's part,

Obey the rules and discipline of art.

Love is lord of all, and is in all the same.