If wool delight thee

  Themselves in deep-dug caverns underground

  Dwell free and careless; to their hearths they heave

  Oak-logs and elm-trees whole, and fire them there,

  There play the night out, and in festive glee

  With barm and service sour the wine-cup mock.

  So 'neath the seven-starred Hyperborean wain

  The folk live tameless, buffeted with blasts

  Of Eurus from Rhipaean hills, and wrap

  Their bodies in the tawny fells of beasts.

    If wool delight thee, first, be far removed

  All prickly boskage, burrs and caltrops; shun

  Luxuriant pastures; at the outset choose

  White flocks with downy fleeces. For the ram,

  How white soe'er himself, be but the tongue

  'Neath his moist palate black, reject him, lest

  He sully with dark spots his offspring's fleece,

  And seek some other o'er the teeming plain.