Proem
Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,Dear Venus that beneath the gliding starsMakest to teem the many-voyaged mainAnd fruitful lands—for all of living thingsThrough thee alone are evermore conceived,Through thee are risen to visit the great sun—Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on,Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away,For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,For thee waters of the unvexed deepSmile, and the hollows of the serene skyGlow with diffused radiance for thee!For soon as comes the springtime face of day,And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred,First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee,Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine,And leap the wild herds round the happy fieldsOr swim the bounding torrents. Thus amain,Seized with the spell, all creatures follow theeWhithersoever thou walkest forth to lead,And thence through seas and mountains and swift streams,Through leafy homes of birds and greening plains,Kindling the lure of love in every breast,Thou bringest the eternal generations forth,Kind after kind. And since ’tis thou aloneGuidest the Cosmos, and without thee naughtIs risen to reach the shining shores of light,Nor aught of joyful or of lovely born,Thee do I crave co-partner in that verseWhich I presume on Nature to composeFor Memmius mine, whom thou hast willed to bePeerless in every grace at every hour—Wherefore indeed, Divine one, give my wordsImmortal charm. Lull to a timely restO’er sea and land the savage works of war,For thou alone hast power with public peaceTo aid mortality; since he who rulesThe savage works of battle, puissant Mars,How often to thy bosom flings his strengthO’ermastered by the eternal wound of love—And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown,Gazing, my Goddess, open-mouthed at thee,Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breathHanging upon thy lips. Him thus reclinedFill with thy holy body, round, above!Pour from those lips soft syllables to winPeace for the Romans, glorious Lady, peace!For in a season troublous to the stateNeither may I attend this task of mineWith thought untroubled, nor mid such eventsThe illustrious scion of the Memmian houseNeglect the civic cause.
Whilst human kindThroughout the lands lay miserably crushedBefore all eyes beneath Religion—whoWould show her head along the region skies,Glowering on mortals with her hideous face—A Greek it was who first opposing daredRaise mortal eyes that terror to withstand,Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning’s strokeNor threatening thunder of the ominous skyAbashed; but rather chafed to angry zestHis dauntless heart to be the first to rendThe crossbars at the gates of Nature old.And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;And forward thus he fared afar, beyondThe flaming ramparts of the world, untilHe wandered the unmeasurable All.Whence he to us, a conqueror, reportsWhat things can rise to being, what cannot,And by what law to each its scope prescribed,Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.Wherefore Religion now is under foot,And us his victory now exalts to heaven.
I know how hard it is in Latian verseTo tell the dark discoveries of the Greeks,Chiefly because our pauper-speech must findStrange terms to fit the strangeness of the thing;Yet worth of thine and the expected joyOf thy sweet friendship do persuade me onTo bear all toil and wake the clear nights through,Seeking with what of words and what of songI may at last most gloriously uncloudFor thee the light beyond, wherewith to viewThe core of being at the centre hid.And for the rest, summon to judgments true,Unbusied ears and singleness of mindWithdrawn from cares; lest these my gifts, arrangedFor thee with eager service, thou disdainBefore thou comprehendest: since for theeI prove the supreme law of Gods and sky,And the primordial germs of things unfold,Whence Nature all creates, and multipliesAnd fosters all, and whither she resolvesEach in the end when each is overthrown.This ultimate stock we have devised to nameProcreant atoms, matter, seeds of things,Or primal bodies, as primal to the world.
I fear perhaps thou deemest that we fareAn impious road to realms of thought profane;But ’tis that same religion oftener farHath bred the foul impieties of men:As once at Aulis, the elected chiefs,Foremost of heroes, Danaan counsellors,Defiled Diana’s altar, virgin queen,With Agamemnon’s daughter, foully slain.She felt the chaplet round her maiden locksAnd fillets, fluttering down on either cheek,And at the altar marked her grieving sire,The priests beside him who concealed the knife,And all the folk in tears at sight of her.With a dumb terror and a sinking kneeShe dropped; nor might avail her now that first’Twas she who gave the king a father’s name.They raised her up, they bore the trembling girlOn to the altar—hither led not nowWith solemn rites and hymeneal choir,But sinless woman, sinfully foredone,A parent felled her on her bridal day,Making his child a sacrificial beastTo give the ships auspicious winds for Troy:Such are the crimes to which Religion leads.
And there shall come the time when even thou,Forced by the soothsayer’s terror-tales, shalt seekTo break from us. Ah, many a dream even nowCan they concoct to rout thy plans of life,And trouble all thy fortunes with base fears.I own with reason: for, if men but knewSome fixed end to ills, they would be strongBy some device unconquered to withstandReligions and the menacings of seers.But now nor skill nor instrument is theirs,Since men must dread eternal pains in death.For what the soul may be they do not know,Whether ’tis born, or enter in at birth,And whether, snatched by death, it die with us,Or visit the shadows and the vasty cavesOf Orcus, or by some divine decreeEnter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang,Who first from lovely Helicon brought downA laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves,Renowned forever among the Italian clans.Yet Ennius too in everlasting verseProclaims those vaults of Acheron to be,Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare,But only phantom figures, strangely wan,And tells how once from out those regions roseOld Homer’s ghost to him and shed salt tearsAnd with his words unfolded Nature’s source.Then be it ours with steady mind to claspThe purport of the skies—the law behindThe wandering courses of the sun and moon;To scan the powers that speed all life below;But most to see with reasonable eyesOf what the mind, of what the soul is made,And what it is so terrible that breaksOn us asleep, or waking in disease,Until we seem to mark and hear at handDead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.