The Enquirer

There exists not the scholar, who has not felt that noble apostrophe of Virgil to the happiness of a country life, in his Georgics II. 459.

O Fortunatos nimium, si sua bona norint, &c.

The following version of this celebrated passage is from Sotheby's translation of the Georgics, and is not unworthy of its original. A Virginian must indeed be ignorant of the blessings which he enjoys, to regard its beauties with indifference:

Ah! happy swain! ah! race beloved of heaven!
If known thy bliss, how great the blessing given!
For thee just earth from her prolific beds
Far from wild war spontaneous nurture sheds.
Though not high domes through all their portals wide
Each morn disgorge the flatterer's refluent tide;
Though not thy gaze on gem-wrought columns rest,
The brazen butt, and gold-embroidered vest;
Nor poisoning Tyre thy snowy fleeces soil,
Nor casia taint thy uncorrupted oil;
Yet peace is thine, and life that knows no change,
And various wealth in Nature's bounties range,
The grot, the living fount, the umbrageous glade,
And sleep on banks of moss beneath the shade;
Thine, all of tame and wild, in lawn and field,
That pastured plains or savage woodlands yield:
Content and patience youth's long toils assuage,
Repose and reverence tend declining age:
There Gods yet dwell, and, as she fled mankind,
There Justice left her last long trace behind.