The Praises of Spring

Like the praises of Italy, the praises of spring recall the Golden Age.^[26] Characteristic of the Georgic poet's retrospective point of view is the notion that spring recalls a former period of ideal vitality. Spring is conceived as the partial reenactment of the birth and primeval perfection of the world:

non alios prima crescentis origine mundi
inluxisse dies aliumve habuisse tenorem
crediderim: ver illud erat, ver magnus agebat
orbis et hibernis parcebant flatibus Euri,
cum primae lucem pecudes hausere, virumque
terrea progenies duris caput extulit arvis,^[27
] immissaeque ferae silvis et sidera caelo.
(2.336–42)

So it was, I believe, when the world first began,
Such the illustrious dawning and tenor of their days.

nec magnos metuent armenta leones
neither shall the herds fear huge lions.

It was springtime then, great spring
Enhanced the earth and spared it the bitter breath of an east wind—
A time when the cattle first lapped up the light, and men
Children of earth themselves arose from the raw champaign,
And wild things issued forth in the wood, and stars in the sky.

Spring is lovely, but is compared to something lovelier and past. The present is positive in the degree to which it reflects a past perfection. The tenses are past, suggesting that earth's greatest vigor and clarity preceded altogether the creation of human beings. The vitality, joyousness, and fertility of spring are marked by the songs of birds (avibus . . . canoris 328) and by pathless thickets (avia . . . virgulta 328), which parallels the poet's joy at seeing fields untouched by man (2.438–39). This nostalgic placing of perfection in a period without mechanization or commerce is a characteristic note in this poem and absent from the Lucretian model of this passage, which will be discussed below.

Another characteristic note here, as also in English rural poetry, is the continuing tension between contrasting perspectives, as Raymond Williams puts it, "summer with winter, pleasure with loss, past or future with present."^[28] In this passage spring represents only a transient peace for nature's creatures between the rigors of winter, on the one hand, and summer, on the other:

nec res hunc tenerae possent perferre laborem,
si non tanta quies iret frigusque caloremque
inter, et exciperet caeli indulgentia terras.
(2.343–45)

Nor could so delicate creatures endure the toil they must,
Unless between cold and heat there came such quietude
And the gentleness of heaven embraced the earth and comforted
her.

One type of experience always implies its opposite in the continuing cycle of seasons and men's lives. This passage oscillates

between the alluring ideal of spring's peace and the impossibility of maintaining this peace in any permanent way.

Despite its clear relationship to the Golden Age motif, Wilkinson, for example, saw in this passage an essentially meaningless interlude "introduced with little particular relevance save that this is to be a happy book."^[29] Klingner and Will Richter, on the other hand, see the passage as a kind of exalting proof of the immanence of God in nature, Richter adducing the epithet omnipotens (325) and the phrase caeli indulgentia ("heaven's gentleness" 345) to corroborate this reading.^[30] One might feel, though, that pater Aether ("Father Air" 325) is an insufficiently emotive term to be the focus of such intense religious feeling as Klingner and Richter perceive here. One might feel that this term, since accompanied by such scientific and dispassionate language as semina genitalia ("seeds of new life," "generative seeds" 324), tener umor ("mild moisture" 331), and ver utile ("good, beneficial spring" 323), works to create a philosophical or scientific tone more than a religious one. The conception, expressed here in scientific language, of perfection as past is a scientific or philosophical analogue of the Golden Age myth and seems to invite comparison with its Lucretian models, especially Lucretius 1.10–20 and 250–61.^[31] Virgil's regressive emphasis in his praise of spring and his emphasis on the absence of negative elements emerges clearly when juxtaposed to these Lucretian passages, one of which follows:

postremo pereunt imbres, ubi eos pater Aether
in gremium matris Terrai praecipitavit;
at nitidae surgunt fruges ramique virescunt
arboribus, crescunt ipsae fetuque gravantur;
hinc alitur porro nostrum genus atque ferarum,
hinc laetas urbes pueris florere videmus

frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas;
hinc fessae pecudes pingui per pabula laeta
corpora deponunt et candens lacteus umor
uberibus manat distentis; hinc nova proles
artubus infirmis teneras lasciva per herbas
ludit lacte mero mentes perculsa novellas.
(Lucr. 1.250–61)

Finally, rains are lost when Father Heaven
Has dropped them into the lap of Mother Earth.
But shining grainfields sprout, and twigs grow green
On trees; the trees grow, too, and bear their fruits;
Hence our land and the animal kind are fed,
Hence we see happy cities bloom with children
And leafy woods all filled with young bird-song;
Hence flocks wearied with fat lay themselves down
Out in the fertile fields, and bright white liquor
Leaks from their swollen teats; hence newborn lambs
Gambol on wobbly legs through tender grass,
Their baby hearts tipsy with winy milk.

As Richter notes, Lucretius' concern is with the physical power of nature, positive and vigorous, as manifest in renewed growth every spring. The finely noted details of artubus infirmis ("wobbly legs" 260) and mentes perculsa novellas ("their baby hearts tipsy" 261) reveal deep sympathy with animals and pleasure in their growth. There is no touch of retrospect or of melancholy here. The notion of a Golden Age or past perfection is antithetical to Epicurean doctrine. Through Epicureanism the spiritual ideal of peace and the opportunity of a better life are ever available. Though the physical condition of the world may he morally flawed or degenerate, Epicurus' truth offers relief from care and fear. Spiritual peace, the discovery of Epicurus, results from an individual's insight into truths of existence (i.e., the gods are distant from human affairs; death, merely a rearrangement of eternal atoms, is not fearful). The ideal time for human beings beckons in the future, a function of an individual's conversion to Epicurus and as permanent as one's ability to

maintain one's conviction of Epicurean truth. The Georgic poet, however, offers no prescriptions for spiritual peace, in respectful deviation from the message of Lucretius (2.490ff.)^[32]