The Georgics, published in 29 BC, is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil. Its ostensible subject is rural life and farming and the work is generally categorized as a “didactic poem”.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgics

Project Guttenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext95/geore10.txt

Excerpt from Virgil’s Georgic I:

“In early spring-tide, when the icy drip

Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr’s breath

Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then ’tis time;

Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox,

And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine.

That land the craving farmer’s prayer fulfils,

Which twice the sunshine, twice the frost has felt;

Ay, that’s the land whose boundless harvest-crops

Burst, see! the barns.”