4. A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord.
(Author Uncertain.)
Who will for me in fitting strain adapt
Field-haunting muses? and with flowers will grace
The spring-tide’s rosy gales? And who will give
The summer harvest’s heavy stalks mature?
5 And to the autumn’s vines their swollen grapes?
Or who in winter’s honour will commend
The olives, ever-peaceful? and will ope
Waters renewed, even at their fountainheads?
And cut from waving grass the leafy flowers?
10 Forthwith the breezes of celestial light
I will attune. Now be it granted me
To meet the lightsome muses! to disclose
The secret rivers on the fluvial top
Of Helicon, and gladsome woods that grow
15 ’Neath other star. And simultaneously
I will attune in song the eternal flames;
Whence the sea fluctuates with wave immense:
What power moves the solid lands to quake;
And whence the golden light first shot its rays
20 On the new world; or who from gladsome clay
Could man have moulded; whence in empty world
Our race could have upgrown; and what the greed
Of living which each people so inspires;
What things for ill created are; or what
25 Death’s propagation; whence have rosy wreaths
Sweet smell and ruddy hue; what makes the vine
Ferment in gladsome grapes away; and makes
Full granaries by fruit of slender stalks
distended be; or makes the tree grow ripe
30 ’Mid ice, with olives black; who gives to seeds
Their increments of vigour various;
And with her young’s soft shadowings protects
The mother. Good it is all things to know
Which wondrous are in nature, that it may
35 Be granted us to recognise through all
The true Lord, who light, seas, sky, earth prepared,
And decked with varied star the new-made world;
And first bade beasts and birds to issue forth;
And gave the ocean’s waters to be stocked
40 With fish; and gathered in a mass the sands,
With living creatures fertilized. Such strains
With stately muses will I spin, and waves
Healthful will from their fountainheads disclose: