Salutation / Introduction

Field-haunting muses? and with flowers will grace

The spring-tide’s rosy gales?  And who will give

The summer harvest’s heavy stalks mature?

5  And to the autumn’s vines their swollen grapes?

Or who in winter’s honour will commend

The olives, ever-peaceful? and will ope

Waters renewed, even at their fountainheads?

And cut from waving grass the leafy flowers?

10  Forthwith the breezes of celestial light

I will attune.  Now be it granted me

To meet the lightsome muses! to disclose

The secret rivers on the fluvial top

Of Helicon, and gladsome woods that grow

15  ’Neath other star.  And simultaneously

I will attune in song the eternal flames;

Whence the sea fluctuates with wave immense:

What power moves the solid lands to quake;

And whence the golden light first shot its rays

20  On the new world; or who from gladsome clay

Could man have moulded; whence in empty world

Our race could have upgrown; and what the greed

Of living which each people so inspires;

What things for ill created are; or what

25  Death’s propagation; whence have rosy wreaths

Sweet smell and ruddy hue; what makes the vine

Ferment in gladsome grapes away; and makes

Full granaries by fruit of slender stalks

distended be; or makes the tree grow ripe

30  ’Mid ice, with olives black; who gives to seeds

Their increments of vigour various;

And with her young’s soft shadowings protects

The mother.  Good it is all things to know

Which wondrous are in nature, that it may

35  Be granted us to recognise through all

The true Lord, who light, seas, sky, earth prepared,

And decked with varied star the new-made world;

And first bade beasts and birds to issue forth;

And gave the ocean’s waters to be stocked

40  With fish; and gathered in a mass the sands,

With living creatures fertilized.  Such strains

With stately muses will I spin, and waves

Healthful will from their fountainheads disclose:

And may this strain of mine the gladsome shower

45  Catch, which from placid clouds doth come, and flows

Deeply and all unsought into men’s souls,

And guide it into our new-fumed lands

In copious rills.

Now come:  if any one

Still ignorant of God, and knowing naught

50  Of life to come, would fain attain to touch

The care-effacing living nymph, and through

The swift waves’ virtue his lost life repair,

And ’scape the penalties of flame eterne,

And rather win the guerdons of the life

55  To come, let such remember God is One,

Alone the object of our prayers; who ’neath

His threshold hath the whole world poised; Himself

Eternally abiding, and to be

Alway for aye; holding the ages all;

60  Alone, before all ages; unbegotten,

Limitless God; who holds alone His seat

Supernal; supereminent alone

Above high heavens; omnipotent alone;

Whom all things do obey; who for Himself

65  Formed, when it pleased Him, man for aye; and gave

Him to be pastor of beasts tame, and lord

Of wild; who by a word could stretch forth heaven;

And with a word could solid earth suspend;

And quicklier than word had the seas wave

70  Disjoined; and man’s dear form with His own hands

Did love to mould; and furthermore did will

His own fair likeness to exist in him;

And by His Spirit on his countenance

The breath of life did breathe.

Unmindful he

75  Of God, such guilt rashly t’ incur!  Beyond

The warning’s range he was not ought to touch.

One fruit illicit, whence he was to know

Forthwith how to discriminate alike

Evil and equity, God him forbade

80  To touch.  What functions of the world did God

Permit to man, and sealed the sweet sweet pledge

Of His own love! and jurisdiction gave

O’er birds, and granted him both deep and soil

To tame, and mandates useful did impart

85  Of dear salvation!  ’Neath his sway He gave

The lands, the souls of flying things, the race

Feathered, and every race, or tame or wild,

Of beasts, and the sea’s race, and monsterforms

Shapeless of swimming things.  But since so soon

90  The primal man by primal crime transgressed

The law, and left the mandates of the Lord

(Led by a wife who counselled all the ills),

By death he ’gan to perish.  Woman ’twas

Who sin’s first ill committed, and (the law

95  Transgressed) deceived her husband.  Eve, induced

By guile, the thresholds oped to death, and proved

Venturi ævi.