Pallas Minerva only I begin
To give my song; that makes war’s terrible din,
Is patroness of cities, and with Mars
Marshall’d in all the care and cure of wars,
And in everted cities, fights, and cries.
But never doth herself set down or rise
Before a city, but at both times She
All injur’d people sets on foot and free.
Give, with thy war’s force, fortune then to me,
And, with thy wisdom’s force, felicity.
A Hymn to Juno
Saturnia, and her throne of gold, I sing,
That was of Rhea the eternal spring,
And empress of a beauty never yet
Equall’d in height of tincture. Of the great
Saturnius (breaking air in awful noise)
The far-fam’d wife and sister; whom in joys
Of high Olympus all the Blessed love,
And honour equal with unequall’d Jove.
A Hymn to Ceres
The rich-hair’d Ceres I assay to sing;
A Goddess, in whose grace the natural spring
Of serious majesty itself is seen;
And of the wedded, yet in grace still green,
Proserpina, her daughter, that displays
A beauty casting every way her rays.
All honour to thee, Goddess! Keep this town;
And take thou chief charge of my song’s renown!
A Hymn to the Mother of the Gods
Mother of all, both Gods and men, commend,
O Muse, whose fair form did from Jove descend;
That doth with cymbal sounds delight her life,
And tremulous divisions of the fife;
Love’s dreadful lions’ roars, and wolves’ hoarse howls,
Sylvan retreats, and hills, whose hollow knolls
Raise repercussive sounds about her ears.
And so may honour ever crown thy years
With all-else Goddesses, and ever be
Exalted in the Muses’ harmony!
A Hymn to Lion-Hearted Hercules
Alcides, forcefullest of all the brood
Of men enforc’d with need of earthy food,
My Muse shall memorise; the son of Jove,
Whom, in fair-seated Thebes (commix’d in love
With great heaven’s sable-cloud-assembling State)
Alcmena bore to him; and who, in date
Of days forepast, through all the sea was sent,
And Earth’s inenarrable continent,
To acts that king Eurystheus had decreed;
Did many a petulant and imperious deed
Himself, and therefore suffer’d many a toil;
Yet now inhabits the illustrious soil
Of white Olympus, and delights his life
With still-young Hebe, his well-ankled wife.
Hail, King, and Son of Jove! Vouchsafe me
Virtue, and, her effect, felicity!