The Odysseys of Homer, together with the shorter poems

Chapter 43: A Hymn to Venus (Third Hymn)

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About This Book

The epic follows a resourceful hero's prolonged voyage home after a great war, presenting episodic adventures involving sea passages, enchanted islands, perilous monsters, and divine interventions. Parallel strands depict the struggle at his household with intrusive suitors and the family members who await his return, while themes of cunning, loyalty, hospitality, identity, and fate are explored. Composed in twenty-four books and accompanied by shorter hymns and poems, the work moves between vivid narrative set pieces and reflective passages on human conduct and the gods' influence.

A Hymn to Venus (Third Hymn)

To Cyprian Venus still my verses vow,
Who gifts as sweet as honey doth bestow
On all mortality; that ever smiles,
And rules a face that all foes reconciles;
Ever sustaining in her hand a flow’r
That all desire keeps ever in her pow’r.

Hail, then, O Queen of well-built Salamine,
And all the state that Cyprus doth confine,
Inform my song with that celestial fire
That in thy beauties kindles all desire.
So shall my Muse for ever honour thee,
And any other thou commend’st to me.