The Icelandic Canadian - 01.10.1942, Blaðsíða 18

14
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
To make a mock’ry of its harvest-yield,
By blades deceitful, nor let lambkin slow
Fear of the wolves, who fleeter are, e’er know.
Then rustic sleek, who trusts fields bountiful,
With huge logs will his blazing hearth heap full;
A troop of home-born slave-bairns, — tokens fair
Of farmer wealthy, — will disport it there,
And huts of boughs before the hearth-place build.
My prayers all, I know, will be fulfilled:
See you how fibres, fav’ring vitals bear,
The graciousness of deity declare?
Now for me wine Falernian, with reek fraught,
And filled on distant consul’s day, be brought;
Likewise the bands of bottle Chian break.
Let wine for us this day right merry make:
On festal day, it is no shame to be
Steeped, and to take stray steps unsteadily.
But let each one declare with every cup
‘Good health! Messalla! To you now we sup!’
And let resounding with our every word
The name of him, who absent is, be heard.
Messalla, whom the tongues of men give praise
For triumphs over Aquitania’s race,
And who, as victor, the great glory art
Of ancestors unshorn, approach, impart
Thy breath of inspiration, while I bring
The rural gods in song a thanksgiving.
I hymn the country and its deities.
With these as guides did human kind first cease
Hunger with acorns of the oak to chase:
They first taught men together planks to place,
And hide their humble homes with leafage green;
They were the first to teach to oxen e’en
To serve, ’tis said, and first to put were they
The wheel beneath the wain. Then passed away
Sustenance savage; then they fruit-trees sowed;
Then gardens rich drank rills that overflowed;
Then golden grapes gave juices, pressed that were
By plying feet; with wine that frees from care
Was water sober mixed. The countryside
Bears harvests when earth yearly lays aside
Her auburn locks in heaven’s sultry heat.
Through the fields flits the bee; with honey sweet
She’s fain in spring to fill the honey-combs:
Gathering blooms to heap the hive she roams.
Then first the farmer with the ploughing plied
Constantly wearied, sang words countrified,
In measure fixed, and to the oat-pipe dry