Lucretius' Hymn to Venus, translated by Rolfe Humphries
Creatress, mother of the Roman line,
Dear Venus, joy of earth and joy of heaven,
All things that live below that heraldry
Of star and planet, whose processional
Moves ever slow and solemn over us,
All things conceived, all things that face the light
In their bright visit, the grain-bearing fields,
The marinered oceans, where the wind and cloud
Are quiet in your presence – all proclaim
Your gift, without which they are nothingness.
For you that sweet artificer, the earth,
Submits her flowers, and for you the deep
Of ocean smiles, and the calm heaven shinesWith shoreless light.
Ah, goddess, when the spring
Makes clear its daytime, and a warmer wind
Stirs from the west, a procreative air,
High in the sky the happy-hearted birds,
Responsive to your coming, call and cry,
The cattle, tame no longer, swim across
The rush of river-torrents, or skip and bound
In joyous meadows; where your brightness leads,
They follow, gladly taken in the drive,
The urge, of love to come. So, on you move
Over the seas and mountains, over streams
Whose ways are fierce, over the greening leas,
Over the leafy tenements of birds,
So moving that in all the ardor burns
For generation and their kind’s increase,
Since you alone control the way things are.
Since without you no thing has ever come
Into the radiant boundaries of light,
Since without you nothing is ever glad,
And nothing ever lovable, I need,
I need you with me, goddess, in the poem
I try to write here, on The Way Things Are.
Every time I read this, I hear the theme from Jurassic Park playing in the background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDlU08RU7Tk
This also reminds me of the statue "Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science" by Louis Ernest Barrias: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/nature-unveiling-herself-before-science/RgELeTjHZp4-qQ?hl=en
Featured image: Venus Genetrix, Parian marble, late 1st century or early 2nd century CE. Collection of the Louvre, Paris, France. Photo by Jean-Pol Grandmont via Wikimedia Commons (X). Image license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. Remix: I applied bokeh.