"Ye deities! who fields and plains protect, Who rule the seasons, and the year direct; Bacchus, and fostering Ceres, powers divine, Who gave us corn for mast, for water wine; Ye fauns, propitious to the rural swains, Ye nymphs, that haunt the mountains and the plains, Join in my work, and to my numbers bring Your needful succour; for your gifts I sing. And thou, whose trident struck the teeming earth, And made a passage for the courser's birth; And thou, for whom the Cean shore sustains The milky herds that graze the flowery plains; And thou, the shepherd's tutelary god, Leave for a while, O Pan! thy loved abode: And, if Arcadian fleeces be thy care, From fields and mountains to my song repair. Inventor, Pallas, of the fattening oil, Thou founder of the plough, and ploughman's toil; And thou, whose hands the shroud-like cypress rear, Come, all ye gods and goddesses, that wear The rural honours, and increase the year; You who supply the ground with seeds of grain; And you, who swell those seeds with kindly rain!"