Georgics

Virgil's Georgics benefits from being read aloud, and the verse translation by Smith Palmer Bovie suits that purpose, being, as a blurb puts it, graceful and musical. It is amusing or depressing, or perhaps both, that Virgil complains in this paean to nature and husbandry and farming that life just isn't the same as it was in the "good old days." For the modern reader, it is more than enough to enjoy the beauty of Virgil's song, but what stands out on closer inspection is the technique of transitioning from nature-loving to philosophy and political science. One of the most moving sections, a denunciation of war, comes at the end of Book One:

So once again the Roman battle lines
Clashed in civil war at Philippi;
The gods saw fit to fatten up once more
The plains of Macedonia with our blood.
And to those places there will come a day
When a farmer drives his curved plow through the earth
And strikes on Roman javelins worn with rust,
Or clinks an empty helmet with his spade,
And wonders at the massive bones laid bare.

Virgil can send chills down two thousand years.