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 delight

Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings

Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things

That fleet along the air, or whom the sea,

Or earth, with her maternal ministry,

Nourish innumerable, thy delight

All seek ... O crowned Aphrodite!

Three spirits canst thou not deceive or quell:--

Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too well

Fierce war and mingling combat, and the fame

Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame.

Diana ... golden-shafted queen,

Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows green

Of the wild woods, the bow, the...

And piercing cries amid the swift pursuit

Of beasts among waste mountains,--such delight

Is 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 swore

An oath not unperformed, that evermore

A virgin she would live mid deities

Divine: her father, for such gentle ties

Renounced, gave glorious gifts--thus in his hall

She sits and feeds luxuriously. O'er all

In every fane, her honours first arise

From men--the eldest of Divinities.

These spirits she persuades not, nor deceives,

But none beside escape, so well she weaves

Her unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor gods

Who live secure in their unseen abodes.

She won the soul of him whose fierce delight

Is 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 Gods

The mortal tenants of earth's dark abodes,

And mortal offspring from a deathless stem

She could produce in scorn and spite of them.

Therefore he poured desire into her breast

Of young Anchises,

Feeding his herds among the mossy fountains

Of the wide Ida's many-folded mountains,--

Whom Venus saw, and loved, and the love clung

Like wasting fire her senses wild among.