O faithful Muse return kept shades from mine lips ūnfading shores page
Wrestle pale threads through uncut molten blood decree drawn song
And thence u’intwin’d: weren’t he Peleus’ son for held Fire Bringer
His cry so fast, sublime leaflets, hanging boughs, might then burst
Tyrant Thund’rer’s Reigning beside Lady Treach’ry and Whispers’
cage Through secret kept – charge true Man of Carpenter craft; awaited
one – Would at fullness Time incarnate Anarchy be, to sorrow three.
Against strength of fate’s will, just so, I tell of mind;
Tale inscribed where no Queen of gods can it find.
No loose lipped vagabond did have it known,
Had figure liver made it – his own.
Artifice to destroy plot usurper in turn;
By his own kingly crown, may he be o’erthrown.
To fall on’t, as by some useless sword,
Might mark man to rule in absence e’remored:
Not even leaflain devotee, seed of Cadmus, thence
Could claim himself some fighting chance –
Though faulted Wine-Drunk vineyards raise
Calling all fire of his half-brother’s blaze;
He shall return to reptile of Mars, a new age to proclaim
Residing in Fear’s domain, with all’s disdain.
Into an Age far beyond those latent shrubs
Would blesséd Xenia, Hestia, and Proserpine weep
For the Tyrant Thund’rer war would rage
Against all odds, for his dying rays: his son,
Not yet but herald for Three, his target would be.
And not yet but five, almost fail to survive;
But that unyielding Will of Word might cast askew
Falsehoods all past kinds could preach true.
He was favoured, fierce warrior sublime,
Poet of thorns, at whose kingly stigmata all should bow
For in this song of forgotten Muse, that tenth,
In despair and with her tongue pulled intense
Fell as blooming suppliant at unknown Lord’s feet
While he inspired within his Godhead such Pagan defeat,
Sending her, as born anew, to assure the favoured prophecy
Of Fire Provider. Sing of your flight and fall, o goddess
To broken haunt of men in great distress: Jason in his heartbreak
Would not journey hence; Thetis, with beauty unmatched
Might be wrenched from Trojan hero’s father, for as it was now untold,
son should with ease surpass his father once grown so bold.
For years three and thirty would war be raged on earth,
From time of hill and tree, traced back to virgin birth.
For one His plan in stones and blood would fulfill
With Water to proclaim genealogy unmired; but true’s trill
Favour of destiny’s nymph, lost by Word’s hand,
Gathering storms to darken cursed tree, against whose bounds,
Struggling not, does fading life give out its claim.
Now return my song to the fleeing maiden Muse
She who would with name unknown be known.
Until time persecution unrested, for the empire
Usurped and claimed by power thought subdued;
In measured time, when house meetings, begun in secret,
Were held in trembling faith – who dared to claim their observance
Had maiden of saintly music, as which she would soon
Invokéd be, an intercession of lyric found in Callixtus’ hold
– Virgin martyr this Muse in her conversion became,
When sister Euterpe in her grave was lain.