Part I

Come, Muses! ye, that from Pieria raise
The song of glory, sing your father’s praise.
By Jove’s high will th’ unknown and known of fame
Exist, the nameless and the fair of name.
’Tis He with ease the bowed feeble rears,
And casts the mighty from their highest spheres:
With ease of human grandeur shrouds the ray:
With ease on abject darkness pours the day:
Straightens the crooked: grinds to dust the proud;
Thunderer on high, whose dwelling is the cloud.
Now bend thine eyes from heaven: behold and hear:
Rule thou the laws in righteousness and fear:
While I to Perses’ heart would fain convey
The truths of knowledge which inspire my lay.
Two STRIFES on earth of soul divided rove:
The wise will this condemn and that approve:
Accursed the one spreads misery from afar,
And stirs up discord and pernicious war:
Men love not this: yet heaven-enforced maintain
The strife abhorr’d, but still abhorr’d in vain.
The other elder rose from darksome night:
The God high-throned, who dwells in ether’s light,
Fix’d deep in earth, and centred midst mankind
This better strife, which fires the slothful mind.
The needy idler sees the rich, and hastes
Himself to guide the plough, and plant the wastes:
Ordering his household: thus the neighbour’s eyes
Mark emulous the wealthy neighbour rise:
Beneficent this strife’s incensing zeal:
The potters angry turn the forming wheel:
Smiths beat their anvils; almsmen zealous throng,
And minstrels kindle with the minstrel’s song.

Oh Perses! thou within thy secret breast
Repose the maxims by my care imprest;
Nor ever let that evil-joying strife
Have power to wean thee from the toils of life;
The whilst thy prying eyes the forum draws,
Thine ears the process, and the din of laws.
Small care be his of wrangling and debate
For whose ungather’d food the garners wait;
Who wants within the summer’s plenty stored,
Earth’s kindly fruits, and Ceres’ yearly hoard.
With these replenish’d, at the brawling bar
For others’ wealth go instigate the war.
But this thou mays’t no more: let justice guide,
Best boon of heaven, and future strife decide.
Not so we shared the patrimonial land
When greedy pillage fill’d thy grasping hand:
The bribe-devouring Judges lull’d by thee
The sentence gave and stamp’d the false decree:
Oh fools! who know not in their selfish soul
How far the half is better than the whole:
The good which asphodel and mallows yield,
The feast of herbs, the dainties of the field!
The food of man in deep concealment lies:
The angry gods have hid it from our eyes.
Else had one day bestow’d sufficient cheer,
And, though inactive, fed thee through the year.
Then might thy hand have laid the rudder by,
In blackening smoke for ever hung on high;
Then had the labouring ox foregone the soil,
And patient mules had found reprieve from toil.
But Jove conceal’d our food: incensed at heart,
Since mock’d by wise Prometheus’ wily art.
Sore ills to man devised the heavenly Sire,
And hid the shining element of fire.
Prometheus then, benevolent of soul,
In hollow reed the spark recovering stole;
Cheering to man; and mock’d the god, whose gaze
Serene rejoices in the lightning’s blaze.
“Oh son of Japhet!” with indignant heart,
Spake the Cloud-gatherer: “oh, unmatch’d in art!
Exultest thou in this the flame retrieved,
And dost thou triumph in the god deceived?
But thou, with the posterity of man,
Shalt rue the fraud whence mightier ills began:
I will send evil for thy stealthy fire,
An ill which all shall love, and all desire.

The Sire who rules the earth and sways the pole
Had said, and laughter fill’d his secret soul:
He bade famed Vulcan with the speed of thought
Mould plastic clay with tempering waters wrought:
Inform with voice of man the murmuring tongue;
The limbs with man’s elastic vigour strung;
The aspect fair as goddesses above,
A virgin’s likeness with the brows of love.
He bade Minerva teach the skill, that sheds
A thousand colours in the gliding threads:
Bade lovely Venus breathe around her face
The charm of air, the witchery of grace:
Infuse corroding pangs of keen desire,
And cares that trick the form with prank’d attire:
Bade Hermes last implant the craft refined
Of thievish manners and a shameless mind.

He gives command; th’ inferior powers obey:
The crippled artist moulds the temper’d clay:
By Jove’s design a maid’s coy image rose:
The zone, the dress, Minerva’s hands dispose:
Adored Persuasion, and the Graces young,
With chains of gold her shapely person hung:
Round her smooth brow the beauteous-tressed Hours
A garland twined of spring’s purpureal flowers:
The whole, Minerva with adjusting art
Forms to her shape and fits to every part.
Last by the counsels of deep-thundering Jove,
The Argicide, his herald from above,
Adds thievish manners, adds insidious lies,
And prattled speech of sprightly railleries:
Then by the wise interpreter of heaven
The name Pandora to the maid was given:
Since all in heaven conferr’d their gifts to charm,
For man’s inventive race, this beauteous harm.

When now the Sire had form’d this mischief fair,
He bade heaven’s messenger convey through air
To Epimetheus’ hands th’ inextricable snare:
Nor he recall’d within his heedless thought
The warning lesson by Prometheus taught:
That he disclaim each present from the skies,
And straight restore, lest ill to man arise:
But he received; and conscious knew too late
Th’ insidious gift, and felt the curse of fate.

On earth of yore the sons of men abode,
From evil free and labour’s galling load:
Free from diseases that with racking rage
Precipitate the pale decline of age.
Now swift the days of manhood haste away,
And misery’s pressure turns the temples gray.
The woman’s hands an ample casket bear;
She lifts the lid; she scatters ills in air.
Within th’ unbroken vase Hope sole remained,
Beneath the vessel’s rim from flight detained:
The maid, by counsels of cloud-gathering Jove,
The coffer seal’d and dropp’d the lid above.
Issued the rest in quick dispersion hurl’d,
And woes innumerous roam’d the breathing world:
With ills the land is rife, with ills the sea,
Diseases haunt our frail humanity:
Through noon, through night on casual wing they glide,
Silent, a voice the Power all-wise denied.

Thus mayst thou not elude th’ omniscient mind:
Now if thy thoughts be to my speech inclin’d,
I in brief phrase would other lore impart
Wisely and well: thou, grave it on thy heart.

When gods alike and mortals rose to birth,
A golden race th’ immortals form’d on earth
Of many-languaged men: they lived of old
When Saturn reign’d in heaven, an age of gold.
Like gods they lived, with calm untroubled mind;
Free from the toils and anguish of our kind:
Nor e’er decrepid age mishaped their frame,
The hand’s, the foot’s proportions still the same.
Strangers to ill, their lives in feasts flow’d by:
Wealthy in flocks; dear to the blest on high:
Dying they sank in sleep, nor seem’d to die.
Theirs was each good; the life-sustaining soil
Yielded its copious fruits, unbribed by toil:
They with abundant goods midst quiet lands
All willing shared the gatherings of their hands.

When earth’s dark womb had closed this race around,
High Jove as dæmons raised them from the ground.
Earth-wandering spirits they their charge began,
The ministers of good, and guards of man.
Mantled with mist of darkling air they glide,
And compass earth, and pass on every side:
And mark with earnest vigilance of eyes
Where just deeds live, or crooked wrongs arise:
Their kingly state; and, delegate from heaven,
By their vicarious hands the wealth of fields is given.

The gods then form’d a second race of man,
Degenerate far; and silver years began.
Unlike the mortals of a golden kind:
Unlike in frame of limbs and mould of mind.
Yet still a hundred years beheld the boy
Beneath the mother’s roof, her infant joy;
All tender and unform’d: but when the flower
Of manhood bloom’d, it wither’d in an hour.
Their frantic follies wrought them pain and woe:
Nor mutual outrage could their hands forego:
Nor would they serve the gods: nor altars raise
That in just cities shed their holy blaze.
Them angry Jove ingulf’d; who dared refuse
The gods their glory and their sacred dues:
Yet named the second-blest in earth they lie,
And second honours grace their memory.

The Sire of heaven and earth created then
A race, the third of many-languaged men.
Unlike the silver they: of brazen mould:
With ashen war-spears terrible and bold:
Their thoughts were bent on violence alone,
The deeds of battle and the dying groan.
Bloody their feasts, with wheaten food unblest:
Of adamant was each unyielding breast.
Huge, nerved with strength each hardy giant stands,
And mocks approach with unresisted hands:
Their mansions, implements, and armour shine
In brass; dark iron slept within the mine.
They by each other’s hands inglorious fell,
In freezing darkness plunged, the house of hell:
Fierce though they were, their mortal course was run;
Death gloomy seized, and snatch’d them from the sun.