Gods whose dominion is over the Souls, Shades without sound, Void, and you, Burning River, and you, broad Spaces voiceless beneath the Night, may I remain sinless in telling what has been told to me, and, by your divine assent, reveal truth sunk in depths of earth and gloom.

For you [muses] are divine, and you have the gifts of memory and story; but only the faintest echo of the great tale has come down to me

I am that poet who in times past made the light melody of pastoral poetry. In my next poem I left the woods for the adjacent farmlands, teaching them to obey even the most exacting tillers of the soil; and the farmers liked my work. But now I turn to the terrible strife of Mars.

In his deepest heart there surge tremendous shame and madness mixed with sorrow and love whipped on by frenzy and a courage aware of its own worth.