Chapman's Homeric Hymns and Other Homerica (Bollingen Series) by Homer

Author:Homer [Homer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2021-03-09T05:00:00+00:00

Seene any other that felloniously

495Hath forc’t your Oxen. Strange thing! What are those Oxen of yours? Or what are Oxen? Knowes

My rude minde, thinke you? My eares onely touch

At their renowne, and heare that there are such.” This speech he past; and ever as he spake 500Beames from the hayre about his eye-lidds brake, His eye-brows up and downe cast, and his eye

Every way look’t askans and careleslie,

And he into a loftie whistling fell,

As if he idle thought Apollo’s spell.

505

Retaine Opinon that thou (even thus soone)

Hast ransackt many a House, and not in one

510Night’s-worke alone, nor in one Countrie neither, Hast beene beseeging House and Man together,

Rigging and rifeling all waies, and no Noise

Made with thy soft feete, where it all destroies.

Soft, therefore, well, and tender thou maist call

515The feet that thy stealths goe and fly withall; For many a field-bredd Herdsman (unheard still)

Hast thou made drowne the Caverns of the Hill

Where his Retreates lie with his helplesse teares, When any flesh-stealth thy desire endeares,

520And thou encountrest either flocks of sheepe Or Herds of Oxen! Up then! doe not sleepe

Thy last Nap in thy Cradle, but come downe

(Companion of black Night) and for this Crowne

Of thy young Rapines beare (from all) the state

525And stile of Prince Theefe into endlesse Date.”

This said, he tooke the Infant in his Armes,

And with him the remembrance of his harmes,

This Præsage utt’ring, lifting him aloft:

“Be ever more the miserablie-soft

530Slave of the bellie, Pursuivant of all, And Author of all mischiefs Capitall.”

He scorn’d his Prophesie so he Nees’d in’s face

Most forciblie, which hearing, his embrace

He loth’d, and hurl’d him gainst the ground; yet still 535Tooke seate before him; though (with all the ill He bore by him) he would have left full faine

That Hewer of his heart so into twaine.

Yet salv’d all thus: “Come, you so swadl’d thing!

Issue of Maia and the Thunder’s King,

540Be confident I shall hereafter finde My brode-browd Oxen, my Prophetique minde

So farr from blaming this thy course that I

Foresee thee in it to Posteritie

The guide of All Men, All waies, to their ends.”

545This spoken, Hermes from the Earth Ascends, Starting Aloft, and as in Studie went,

Wrapping himselfe in his Integument;

And thus askt Phoebus: “Whither force you Me,

Farr-shot and farr most powrefull Deitie?

550I know (for all your fayning) y’are still wroth About your Oxen, and suspect my Troth.

O Jupiter! I wish the generall Race

Of all Earth’s Oxen rooted from her face.

I steale your Oxen? I againe professe

555That neither I have stolne them, nor can ghesse Who else should steale them. What strange Beasts are these Your so-lov’d Oxen? I must say (to please

Your humor thus farr) that even My few Hoowres

Have heard their fame. But be the sentence yours

560Of the Debate betwixt us, or to Jove (For more indifferencie) the Cause remove.”

Thus when the Solitude-affecting God

And the Latonian seede had laid abroad

All things betwixt them, (though not yet agreed,

565Yet might I speake) Apollo did proceede, Nothing unjustly, to charge Mercurie

With stealing of the Cows he does denie.

But his Profession was, with filed speach

And Craft’s faire Complements, to overreach

570All, and even Phoebus.

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