Classic Poem

This festal day let soil and tiller rest!
Hang up the share, and give all ploughing o'er;
Unstrap the yokes. Each ox, with chaplets drest,
Should feed at large a well-filled stall before.

See the doomed lamb to blazing altars led,
White crowds behind with olive fillets bound;
That evil from our borders may be sped,
Thus, gods of home, we lustrate hind and ground.

That ye may fend from all mischance the swain,
And from our acres banish blight and bale,
Lest hollow ears should mock our hope of grain,
Or 'gainst weak lambs the fleeter wolf prevail.

Bold in his thriving tilth the farmer then
Logs on a blazing hearth shall cheerly pile;
And slaves, by whom their master's ease we ken,
Frolic, and wattle bowers of twigs the while.