With its own lustre clad, another clothes;
265 And here with many a seed the dewy fields
Are dappled, and the snowy tilths are crisped
With rosy flowers. No region happier
Is known in other spots; none which in look
Is fairer, or in honour more excels.
270 Never in flowery gardens are there born
Such lilies, nor do such upon our plains
Outbloom; nor does the rose so blush, what time,
New-born, ’tis opened by the breeze; nor is
The purple with such hue by Tyrian dye
275 Imbued. With coloured pebbles beauteous gleams
The gem: here shines the prasinus; there glows
The carbuncle; and giant-emerald
Is green with grassy light. Here too are born
The cinnamons, with odoriferous twigs;
280 And with dense leaf gladsome amomum joins
Its fragrance. Here, a native, lies the gold
Of radiant sheen; and lofty groves reach heaven
In blooming time, and germens fruitfullest
Burden the living boughs. No glades like these
285 Hath Ind herself forth-stretcht; no tops so dense
Rears on her mount the pine; nor with a shade
So lofty-leaved is her cypress crisped;
Nor better in its season blooms her bough
In spring-tide. Here black firs on lofty peak
290 Bloom; and the only woods that know no hail
Are green eternally: no foliage falls;
At no time fails the flower. There, too, there blooms
A flower as red as Tarsine purple is:
A rose, I ween, it is (red hue it has,
295 An odour keen); such aspect on its leaves
It wears, such odour breathes. A tree it stands,
With a new flower, fairest in fruits; a crop
Life-giving, dense, its happy strength does yield.
Rich honies with green cane their fragrance join,
300 And milk flows potable in runners full;
And with whate’er that sacred earth is green,
It all breathes life; and there Crete’s healing gift
Is sweetly redolent. There, with smooth tide,
Flows in the placid plains a fount: four floods
305 Thence water parted lands. The garden robed
With flowers, I wot, keeps ever spring; no cold
Of wintry star varies the breeze; and earth,
After her birth-throes, with a kindlier blast