Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THEOGONY: THE MUSES' GIFT (1), by HESIOD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THEOGONY: THE MUSES' GIFT (1), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Let our song begin with the choir of muses
Last Line: But why this wandering tale of a tree or stone?


LET our song begin with the choir of Muses that own
the great and sacred mountain of Helicon.
They dance round a spring as dark as violets, round
the altar of mighty Zeus, softly treading the ground.

Hesiod one day they taught a beautiful song
while under their mountain to pasture his lambs he led --
and I listened, and thus the heavenly Muses said,
daughters of Zeus of the Buckler, Olympians born:
'Shepherds of the wild, mere bellies, creatures of scorn,
we can make false things seem true, so great is our skill,
but we know how to utter the truth, when that is our will.'

So sang the ready-voiced daughters of highest god,
and they plucked from the sturdy bay-tree a wonderful rod
for me, and they breathed in my frame a voice divine,
and the power to tell of the past or future was mine,
and they bade me sing of the gods who never may die,
and ever, the first and the last, on themselves to cry --
But why this wandering tale of a tree or stone?





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