stillness of the waves before a storm.

"Nam foecunda rubri
Serpent per prata colubri,
Gramina vastantes,
Flores fructusque vorantes,
Omnia foedantes,
Vitiantes, et spoliantes;
Quanquam haud pugnaces,
Ibunt per cuncta minaces,
Fures absque timore,
Et pingues absque labore."

"Then through thy fields shall scarlet reptiles stray,
And rapine and pollution mark their way;
Their hungry swarms the peaceful vale shall fright,
Still fierce to threaten, still afraid to fight;
The teeming year's whole product shall devour,
Insatiate pluck the fruit, and crop the flow'r;
Shall glutton on the industrious peasants' spoil,
Rob without fear, and fatten without toil."

He seems, in these verses, to descend to a particular account of this
dreadful calamity; but his description is capable of very different
senses, with almost equal probability:

"Red serpents," says he, (_rubri colubri_ are the Latin words, which the
poetical translator has rendered _scarlet reptiles_, using a general
term for a particular, in my opinion, too licentiously,) "Red serpents
shall wander o'er her meadows, and pillage, and pollute," &c. The