Homer's Hymn to Venus
[VERSES 1-55, WITH SOME OMISSIONS.]
Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite,Who wakens with her smile the lulled delightOf sweet desire, taming the eternal kingsOf Heaven, and men, and all the living thingsThat fleet along the air, or whom the sea,Or earth, with her maternal ministry,Nourish innumerable, thy delightAll seek ... O crowned Aphrodite!Three spirits canst thou not deceive or quell:--Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too wellFierce war and mingling combat, and the fameOf glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame.Diana ... golden-shafted queen,Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows greenOf the wild woods, the bow, the...And piercing cries amid the swift pursuitOf beasts among waste mountains,--such delightIs hers, and men who know and do the right.Nor Saturn's first-born daughter, Vesta chaste,Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last,Such was the will of aegis-bearing Jove;But sternly she refused the ills of Love,And by her mighty Father's head she sworeAn oath not unperformed, that evermoreA virgin she would live mid deitiesDivine: her father, for such gentle tiesRenounced, gave glorious gifts--thus in his hallShe sits and feeds luxuriously. O'er allIn every fane, her honours first ariseFrom men--the eldest of Divinities.
These spirits she persuades not, nor deceives,But none beside escape, so well she weavesHer unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor godsWho live secure in their unseen abodes.She won the soul of him whose fierce delightIs thunder--first in glory and in might.And, as she willed, his mighty mind deceiving,With mortal limbs his deathless limbs inweaving,Concealed him from his spouse and sister fair,Whom to wise Saturn ancient Rhea bare.but in return,In Venus Jove did soft desire awaken,That by her own enchantments overtaken,She might, no more from human union free,Burn for a nursling of mortality.For once amid the assembled Deities,The laughter-loving Venus from her eyes
Shot forth the light of a soft starlight smile,And boasting said, that she, secure the while,Could bring at Will to the assembled GodsThe mortal tenants of earth's dark abodes,And mortal offspring from a deathless stemShe could produce in scorn and spite of them.Therefore he poured desire into her breastOf young Anchises,Feeding his herds among the mossy fountainsOf the wide Ida's many-folded mountains,--Whom Venus saw, and loved, and the love clungLike wasting fire her senses wild among.
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