Orval, or The Fool of Time :: :: University of Virginia Library

Benignant Mother of the Ænead race,
Venus, to gods and men delightful! Thou
That, underneath the sliding signs of heaven,
With concourse throngest the ship-bearing sea
And fruitful earth: by whose conceiving, all
That lives doth leap into the light o' the sun:
Thee, Goddess, thee, at thine approach, the winds
Flee, and the skyey clouds: the dœdal earth
To thee her flow'rets sweet uprears: to thee
The waters wide of Ocean laugh, and all
The stainless heaven in full-pour'd light is clear.
Soon as the vernal forehead of the day
Unveil'd appears, what time the procreant gale
Of free Favonius nimbly breathes abroad,
Thee, Goddess, and thy comings, thrill'd at heart
By thy strong sweetness, first the aëry birds
Herald; and then, their happy haunts about,
The wild herds bound, and swim the torrent brooks.
So taken by delight of thy sweet lures

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With fond desire, the life of all that lives
To follow thee, where'er thou wilt, is fain;
Till last, amid the seas, among the hills,
And by the flowing of the headlong streams,
Green grassy lawns, and leafy homes of birds,
In every breast implanting balmy love,
Each, in his several kind, thou dost constrain
With lusty heart life's ages to renew.

Sole, who dost universal nature sway,
Since without thee may never aught arise
Into the regions of celestial light,
Nor lovely aught, nor aught delightful be,
Thee my divine associate I desire
In verses yet unwritten, to reveal
The Nature of the Universe of Things,
Which now I meditate for Memmius' son,
Memmius my friend; whom, Goddess, thou hast will'd,
Gifted in all, at all times to excel.
So much the more, Divine Inspirer, grant
Enduring sweetness to these words of mine:
And lull, meanwhile, war's barbarous business all
To slumbrous rest the lands and seas around:
For thou alone our mortal hearts canst help
With hushful peace. Since Mars armipotent,
That over war's wild labours lorddom wields,
Oft in thy lap, by love's eternal wound
O'ermaster'd, flings himself; and, gazing up
(His full firm-moulded throat back-sloped at ease),
Into his soul thy sweetness there he breathes,
There feeds on love his famisht looks, the while

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His sigh'd-forth spirit upon thy lip doth hang.
O'er him, so leaning, as thy sacred form,
O Goddess, all its fluent beauty bends,
Pour from thy lips a language of soft sounds,
And for thy Romans, O Renown'd, beseech
Untroubled peace. For, neither may we hope
With even mind, in this uneven hour
That shakes the land, our purpose to pursue,
Nor Memmius' noble scion, in a time
So toss'd, be wanting to the common weal.

For what remains, to me, O Memmius, lend
Thine ears' free listening; and, from cares withdrawn,
Thyself to truth's pure argument address.
Nor yet, despised ere comprehended, spurn
My gifts, for thee, with studious zeal, disposed.
For of the supreme order of the spheres,
The gods, and nature's primal sources all,
Discourse with thee I purpose; and to show
Whence nature all things doth to being bring,
Put forth, and nourish; whither, also, she
Anon, dissolving, doth restore them all.
These, in the rendering of our argument,
Matter, we call; the elemental seeds
And generative substances of things;
Naming them primal; since all things that are
From these, the first, derivatively come.

For all the being of the gods must needs,
Of its own nature, perfect peace enjoy,
Living immortally, far off removed
From all this coil of sublunary things:

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Exempt from peril, from all pain exempt,
Itself to itself sufficing, and of us
Naught needing, neither by the good, nor ill
Men do, disposed to favour or to wrath.

What time man's life before his own eyes lay
Low grovelling, ground to earth beneath the weight
Of grim Religion, that from cloudy air
Her lifted head in heaven put forth, and stood
High over men with horrible countenance,
A man in Greece, then first of all mankind,
Dared to uplift, against her, mortal eyes,
And, fearless fronting, firm withstand, her. Him
Nor rumours of the gods, nor thunder-bolts,
Nor heaven with muttering menace, could dismay
But rather all the more within him roused
Sharp courage, and the yearning of his soul
To be the first to shatter the shut bars
Of Nature's portals. Therefore, his soul's strength
Prevail'd: and he, in high procedure, far
O'erpass'd the wide world's burning boundary walls,
And traversed in the spirit and the thought
The vast immeasurable infinite.
Thence, now, triumphant, he to us reports
What may be; what may not be; what, in fine,
Is the capacity of all things; what
The bound abysmal. Whence, in turn, brought down
And trodden 'neath our feet Religion writhes.
Us level with heaven's height his victory sets.