The Odysseys of Homer, together with the shorter poems

Chapman’s Introduction

I have adventured, right noble Earl, out of my utmost and ever-vowed service to your virtues, to entitle their merits to the patronage of Homer’s English life, whose wished natural life the great Macedon would have protected as the spirit of his empire,

That he to his unmeasur’d mighty acts Might add a fame as vast; and their extracts, In fires as bright and endless as the stars, His breast might breathe and thunder out his wars. But that great monarch’s love of fame and praise Receives an envious cloud in our foul days; For since our great ones ceased themselves to do, Deeds worth their praise, they hold it folly too To feed their praise in others. But what can, Of all the gifts that are, be giv’n to man More precious than Eternity and Glory, Singing their praises in unsilenc’d story? Which no black day, no nation, nor no age, No change of time or fortune, force nor rage, Shall ever rase? All which the monarch knew, Where Homer liv’d entitled, would ensue: Cuius de gurgite vivo Combibit arcanos vatum omnis turba furores, etc. From whose deep fount of life the thirsty rout Of Thespian prophets have lien sucking out Their sacred rages. And as th’ influent stone Of Father Jove’s great and laborious son Lifts high the heavy iron, and far implies The wide orbs that the needle rectifies, In virtuous guide of ev’ry sea-driv’n course, To all aspiring his one boundless force; So from one Homer all the holy fire That ever did the hidden heat inspire In each true Muse came clearly sparkling down, And must for him compose one flaming crown. He, at Jove’s table set, fills out to us Cups that repair age sad and ruinous, And gives it built of an eternal stand With his all-sinewy Odyssæan hand, Shifts time and fate, puts death in life’s free state, And life doth into ages propagate. He doth in men the Gods’ affects inflame, His fuel Virtue blown by Praise and Fame; And, with the high soul’s first impression driv’n, Breaks through rude chaos, earth, the seas, and heav’n. The nerves of all things hid in nature lie Naked before him; all their harmony Tun’d to his accents, that in beasts breathe minds. What fowls, what floods, what earth, what air, what winds, What fires ethereal, what the Gods conclude In all their counsels, his Muse makes indued With varied voices that ev’n rocks have mov’d. And yet for all this, naked Virtue lov’d, Honours without her he as abject prizes, And foolish Fame, deriv’d from thence, despises. When from the vulgar taking glorious bound Up to the mountain where the Muse is crown’d, He sits and laughs to see the jaded rabble Toil to his hard heights, t’ all access unable, etc.