“A wet summer and a fine winter should be the farmer's prayer.”
Georgics, Book I, p. 39
Translations, The Poems of Virgil Translated Into English Prose (1872)
Umida solstitia atque hiemes orate serenas,
agricolae.
Book I, lines 100–101
Georgics (29 BC)
Umida<!--Humida?--> solstitia atque hiemes orate serenas, agricolae.
“A wet summer and a fine winter should be the farmer's prayer.”
Georgics, Book I, p. 39
Translations, The Poems of Virgil Translated Into English Prose (1872)
“Pray for wet Summers, Winters wanting Rain.”
The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Georgicks
"Going up to Jerusalem", Twenty Sermons (1886), p. 330.
Context: O, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.
Memorial service for George Washington held in South Farms, Connecticut, 22 February 1880. As quoted in [Strong, Barbara Nolen, The Morris Academy: Pioneer in Coeducation, Morris Bicentennial Committee, 1976, Torrington, 31, http://books.google.com/books?id=nrCYGQAACAAJ&dq]
“Winter draws what summer paints.”
Haven (1951)
Return to Tipasa (1954)
Variant translation: In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
As translated in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1968), p. 169; also in The Unquiet Vision : Mirrors of Man in Existentialism (1969) by Nathan A. Scott, p. 116