WORLD SOUNDSCAPE PROJECT
SOUND REFERENCES IN LITERATURE


540.

Here you shall sprinkle fragrances to their taste -

Crushed balm, honeywort humble -

Make a tinkling noise round about and clash the Mother-god's cymbals.

 

Hue tu iussos asperge sapores,

trita melisphylla et cerinthae ignobile gramen,

tinntiuque cie et Matris quate cymbala circun.

 

Virgil, Georgics, Book IV, lines 62-64, trans. C. Day Lewis, The Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil, Doubleday, New York, 1964.

PLACE: Italy

TIME: During Virgil's lifetime (ca. 70 B.C.)

CIRCUMSTANCE: Virgil describes how the beekeeper must seek to please his bees.

 

541.

Their hearts spoiling for a fight:

Martial, a brazen harshness, a roar rebuking the laggard

You hear, and a cry that is like the abrupt blasts of a trumpet.

 

Namque morantis

Martius ille aeris rauci canor increpat, et vox

auditur Iractos sonitus imitata tubarurn .

 

Virgil, Georgics, Book IV, lines 70-72, trans. C. Day Lewis, The Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil, Doubleday, New York, 1964.

PLACE: Italy

TIME: During Virgil's lifetime (ca. 70 B.C.)

CIRCUMSTANCE: Two nests of bees make war on one another.


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