Homer's Hymn To Venus.

Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite,     Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight     Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings     Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things     That fleet along the air, or whom the sea,     Or earth, with her maternal ministry,     Nourish innumerable, thy delight     All seek ... O crowned Aphrodite!     Three spirits canst thou not deceive or quell: -     Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too well     Fierce war and mingling combat, and the fame     Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame.     Diana ... golden-shafted queen,     Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows green     Of the wild woods, the bow, the...     And piercing cries amid the swift pursuit     Of beasts among waste mountains, - such delight     Is hers, and men who know and do the right.     Nor Saturn's first-born daughter, Vesta chaste,     Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last,     Such was the will of aegis-bearing Jove;     But sternly she refused the ills of Love,     And by her mighty Father's head she swore     An oath not unperformed, that evermore     A virgin she would live mid deities     Divine: her father, for such gentle ties     Renounced, gave glorious gifts - thus in his hall     She sits and feeds luxuriously. O'er all     In every fane, her honours first arise     From men - the eldest of Divinities.     These spirits she persuades not, nor deceives,     But none beside escape, so well she weaves     Her unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor gods     Who live secure in their unseen abodes.     She won the soul of him whose fierce delight     Is thunder - first in glory and in might.     And, as she willed, his mighty mind deceiving,     With mortal limbs his deathless limbs inweaving,     Concealed him from his spouse and sister fair,     Whom to wise Saturn ancient Rhea bare.     but in return,     In Venus Jove did soft desire awaken,     That by her own enchantments overtaken,     She might, no more from human union free,     Burn for a nursling of mortality.     For once amid the assembled Deities,     The laughter-loving Venus from her eyes     Shot forth the light of a soft starlight smile,     And boasting said, that she, secure the while,     Could bring at Will to the assembled Gods     The mortal tenants of earth's dark abodes,     And mortal offspring from a deathless stem     She could produce in scorn and spite of them.     Therefore he poured desire into her breast     Of young Anchises,     Feeding his herds among the mossy fountains     Of the wide Ida's many-folded mountains, -     Whom Venus saw, and loved, and the love clung     Like wasting fire her senses wild among.