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Invocation of the muse

A. Melville (1986)

Of bodies changed to other forms I tell;
You Gods, who have yourselves wrought every change,
Inspire my enterprise and lead my lay
In one continuous song from nature's first
Remote beginnings to our modern times.
(1)

B. Golding (1567) [spelling modernized]

Of shapes transformed to bodies strange, I purpose to entreat;
Ye gods vouchsafe (for you are they who wroght this wonderous feat)
Grant that my verse may to my time, his course directly run
Before the Sea and Land were made, and Heaven that all doth hide,
In all the worlde one only face of nature did abide,
Which Chaos hight [called], a huge rude heape, and nothing else but even
A heavie lump and clotted clod of seeds together driven
Of things at strife among themselves for want of order due.
(1.1-9, 21)

C. Dryden (1717) [spelling modernized]

Of Bodies chang'd to various Forms I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these Miracles did spring,
Inspire my Numbers with Celestial Heat;
Till I, my long laborious work complete:
And add perpetual Tenor to my Rhymes
Deduc'd from Nature's Birth, to Ceasar's Times.
(1)

D. Mandelbaum (1993)

My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world's beginning to our day.
(17)

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