O women, what pains can enhance your looks, and how your beauty may be preserved. By cultivation was the sterile ground bidden render bounty of wheat, and the devouring briers slain.
Cultivation improves the bitter juice of fruit, and the cleft tree gains adopted richness.
What is cultivated gives pleasure. Lofty halls are plated with gold, the black earth lies hid under marble buildings. But your mothers have borne delicate girls. In feminine wise are your husbands made trim, and the bride has scarce aught to add to her smartness. The bird of Juno spreads out the feathers praised by man, and in its own beauty many a bird exults.