Orphic Hymn 34

To Apollo

THE FUMIGATION FROM MANNA. Blest Pæan, come, propitious to my pray’r, Illustrious pow’r, whom Memphian tribes revere, Slayer of Tityus, and the God of health, Lycorian Phœbus, fruitful source of wealth: Spermatic, golden-lyr’d, the field from thee Receives its constant rich fertility. Titanic, Grunian, Smynthian, thee I sing, Python-destroying, ballow’d, Delphian king: Rural, light-bearer, and the Muses’ head, Noble and lovely, arm’d with arrows dread: Far-darting, Bacchian, twofold, and divine, Pow’r far diffus’d, and course oblique is thine. O Delian king, whose light-producing eye Views all within, and all beneath the sky; Whose locks are gold, whose oracles are sure, Who omens good reveal’st, and precepts pure; Hear me entreating for the human kind, Hear, and be present with benignant mind; For thou survey’st this boundless ether all, And ev’ry part of this terrestrial ball Abundant, blessed; and thy piercing sight Extends beneath the gloomy, silent night; Beyond the darkness, starry-ey’d, profound, The stable roots, deep-fix’d by thee, are found. The world’s wide bounds, all-flourishing, are thine, Thyself of all the source and end divine. ‘Tis thine all Nature’s music to inspire With various-sounding, harmonizing lyre: Now the last string thou tun’st to sweet accord, Divinely warbling, now the highest chord; Th’ immortal golden lyre, now touch’d by thee, Responsive yields a Dorian melody. All Nature’s tribes to thee their diff’rence owe, And changing seasons from thy music flow: Hence, mix’d by thee in equal parts, advance Summer and Winter in alternate dance; This claims the highest, that the lowest string, The Dorian measure tunes the lovely spring: Hence by mankind Pan royal, two-horn’d nam’d, Shrill winds emitting thro’ the syrinx fam’d; Since to thy care the figur’d seal’s consign’d, Which stamps the world with forms of every kind. Hear me, blest pow’r, and in these rites rejoice, And save thy mystics with a suppliant voice.