II.
Sweet Homer[169] sings the praise
Of Phoebus clear and bright,
And yet his strongest rays
Cannot with feeble light
Cast through the secret ways
Of earth and seas his sight,
Though 'all lies open to his eyes.'[170]
But He who did this world devise—
The earth's vast depths unseen
From his sight are not free,
No clouds can stand between,
He at one time doth see
What are, and what have been,
And what shall after be.
Whom, since he only vieweth all,
You rightly the true Sun may call."
[169] Cf. Il. iv. 277, Od. xii. 323.
[170] This line renders the Greek with which Boethius begins the poem, adapting Homer's phrase "all surveying, all o'erhearing." See the critical note on p. 372.