Part I

Begin we from the Muses oh my song!
Muses of Helicon: their dwelling-place
The mountain vast and holy: where around
The altar of high Jove and fountain dark
From azure depth, they lightly leap in dance
With delicate feet; and having duly bathed
Their tender bodies in Permessian streams,
In springs that gush’d fresh from the courser’s hoof,
Or blest Olmius’ waters, many a time
Upon the topmost ridge of Helicon
Their elegant and amorous dances thread,
And smite the earth with strong-rebounding feet.
Thence breaking forth tumultuous, and enwrapt
With the deep mist of air, they onward pass
Nightly, and utter, as they sweep on high,
A voice in stilly darkness beautiful.
They hymn the praise of Ægis-wielding Jove,
And Juno, named of Argos, who august
In golden sandals walks: and her, whose eyes
Glitter with azure light, Minerva born
From Jove: Apollo, sire of prophecy,
And Dian gladden’d by the twanging bow:
Earth-grasping Neptune, shaker of earth’s shores:
Majestic Themis and Dione fair:
And Venus twinkling bland her tremulous lids:
Hebe, her brows with golden fillet bound:
Morn, the vast Sun, and the resplendent Moon:
Latona and Japetus: and him
Of crooked wisdom, Saturn: and the Earth:
And the huge Ocean, and the sable Night
And all the sacred race of deities
Existing ever. They to HESIOD erst
Have taught their stately song: the whilst he fed
His lambs beneath the holy Helicon.

And thus the goddesses, th’ Olympian maids
Whose sire is Jove, first hail’d me in their speech;
“Shepherds! that tend in fields the fold; ye shames!
Ye fleshly appetites! the Muses hear:
’Tis we can utter fictions veil’d like truths,
Or, if we list, speak truths without a veil.”

So said the daughters of the mighty Jove,
Sooth-speaking maids: and gave unto my hand
A rod of marvellous growth, a laurel-bough
Of blooming verdure; and within me breathed
A heavenly voice, that I might utter forth
All past and future things: and bade me praise
The blessed race of ever-living gods:
And ever first and last the Muses sing.

Away then—why this tale of oaks and rocks?
Begin we from the Muses oh my song!
They the great spirit of their father Jove
Delight in heaven: their tongues symphonious breathe
All past, all present, and all future things:
Sweet, inexhaustible, from every mouth
That voice flows on: the Thunderer’s palace laughs
With scatter’d melody of honied sounds
From the breathed voice of goddesses, and all
The snow-topp’d summits of Olympus ring,
The mansions of immortals. They send forth
Their undecaying voice, and in their songs
Proclaim before all themes the race of gods
From the beginning: the majestic race,
Whom earth and awful heaven endow’d with life:
And all the deities who sprang from these,
Givers of blessings. Then again they change
The strain to Jove, the sire of gods and men:
Him praise the choral goddesses: him first
And last: with rising and with ending song:
How excellent he is above all gods,
And in his power most mighty. Once again
They sing the race of men, and giants strong;
And soothe the soul of Jupiter in heaven.
They, daughters of high Jove: Olympian maids:
Whom erst Mnemosyne, protecting queen
Of rich Eleuther’s fallows, in embrace
With Jove their sire amidst Pieria’s groves
Conceived: of ills forgetfulness; to cares
Rest: thrice three nights did counsel-shaping Jove
Melt in her arms, apart from eyes profane
Of all immortals to the sacred couch
Ascending: and when now the year was full,
When moons had wax’d and waned, and reasons roll’d,
And days were number’d, she, some space remote
From where Olympus highest towers in snow,
Bare the nine maids, with souls together knit
In harmony: whose thought is only song:
Within whose bosoms dwells th’ unsorrowing mind.
There on the mount they shine in troops of dance,
And dwell in beautified abodes: and nigh
The Graces also dwell, and Love himself,
And hold the feast. But they through parted lips
Send forth a lovely voice; they sing the laws
Of universal heaven; the manners pure
Of deathless gods, and lovely is their voice.
Anon they bend their footsteps tow’rds the mount,
Rejoicing in their beauteous voice and song
Unperishing: far round the dusky earth
Rings with their hymning voices, and beneath
Their many-rustling feet a pleasant sound
Ariseth, as tumultuous pass they on
To greet their heavenly sire. He reigns in heaven,
The bolt and glowing lightning in his grasp,
Since by the strong ascendant of his arm
Saturn his father fell: he to the gods
Appoints the laws, and he their honours names.

So sing the Muses; dwellers on the mount
Of heaven: nine daughters of the mighty Jove:
Melpomene, Euterpe, Erato,
Polymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia,
Urania, Clio, and Calliope:
The chiefest she: who walks upon the steps
Of kingly judges in their majesty:
And whomsoe’er of heavenly-nurtured kings
Jove’s daughters will to honour, looking down
With smiling aspect on his cradled head
They pour a gentle dew upon his tongue:
And words, as honey sweet, drop from his lips.
To him the people look: on him all eyes
Wait awful, who in righteousness discerns
The ways of judgment: in a single breath,
Utter’d with knowledge, ends the mightiest strife,
And all is peace. The wisdom this of kings:
That in their judgment-hall they from the oppress’d
Turn back the tide of ills, retrieving wrongs
With mild accost of soothing eloquence.
On him, the judge and king, when passing forth
Among the city-ways, all reverent look
With a mild worship, as he were a god:
And in the great assembly first is he.
Such is the Muses’ goodly gift to man.
The Muses, and Apollo darting far
The arrows of his splendour, raise on earth
Harpers and men of song: but kings arise
From Jove himself. Oh blessed is the man
Whome’er the Muses love! sweet is the voice
That from his lips flows ever. Is there one
Who hides some fresh grief in his wounded mind
And mourns with aching heart? but he, the bard,
The servant of the Muse, awakes the song
To deeds of men of old, and blessed gods
That dwell on mount Olympus. Straight he feels
His sorrow stealing in forgetfulness:
Nor of his griefs remembers aught: so soon
The Muse’s gift has turn’d his woes away.

Daughters of Jove! all hail! but oh inspire
The lovely song! record the heavenly race
Of gods existing ever: those who sprang
From earth and starry heaven and murky night,
And whom the salt deep quicken’d. Say how first
The gods and earth became: how rivers flow’d:
Th’ unbounded sea raged high in foamy swell,
The stars shone forth, and overhead the sky
Spread its broad arch: and say from these what gods,
Givers of blessings, sprang: and how they shared
Heaven’s splendid attributes and parted out
Distinct their honours: and how first they fix’d
Their dwelling midst Olympus’ winding vales:
Tell, oh ye Muses! ye who also dwell
In mansions of Olympus: tell me all
From the beginning: say who first arose.
First of all beings Chaos was: and next
Wide-bosom’d Earth, the seat for ever firm
Of all th’ immortals, whose abode is placed
Among the mount Olympus’ snow-top’d heads,
Or in the dark abysses of the ground:
Then Love most beauteous of immortals rose:
He of each god and mortal man at once
Unnerves the limbs, dissolves the wiser breast
By reason steel’d, and quells the very soul.

From Chaos, Erebus and sable Night:
From Night arose the Sunshine and the Day:
Offspring of Night from Erebus’ embrace.

Earth first conceived with Heaven: whose starry cope,
Like to herself immense, might compass her
On every side: and be to blessed gods
A resting-place immoveable for ever.
She teem’d with the high Hills, the pleasant haunts
Of goddess nymphs, who dwell within the glens
Of mountains. With no aid of tender love
She gave to birth the sterile Sea, high-swol’n
In raging foam: and, Heaven-embraced, anon
She teem’d with Ocean, rolling in deep whirls
His vast abyss of waters. Crœus, then,
Cæus, Hyperion, and Iäpetus,
Themis, and Thea rose; Mnemosyne,
And Rhea; Phœbe diadem’d with gold,
And love-inspiring Tethys: and of these,
Youngest in birth, the wily Saturn came,
The sternest of her sons; for he abhorr’d
The sire who gave him life. Then brought she forth
The Cyclops brethren, arrogant of heart,
Undaunted Arges, Brontes, Steropes:
Who forged the lightning shaft, and gave to Jove
His thunder: they were like unto the gods:
Save that a single ball of sight was fix’d
In their mid-forehead. Cyclops was their name,
From that round eye-ball in their brow infix’d:
And strength and force and manual craft were theirs.