METRE IV

O Dei proles, genetrixque rerum.

`O offspring of God, mother of all things, bond and firm chain of the universe, jewel of earth, mirror to mortality, light-bringer of the world! Peace, love, virtue, government, power, order, law, end, way, light, source, life, glory, splendor, beauty, form, pattern of the world! Thou who, guiding the universe with thy reins, dost join all things in firmness with the

knot of concord, and dost with the bond of peace marry heaven to earth; who, reflecting upon the simple ideas of mind, dost fashion every species of thing, and, cloaking matter with form, dost shape the cloak of form with thy finger; whom the heavens befriend, whom the air serves, whom the earth cherishes, whom the wave worships, to whom, as to the mistress of the universe, each thing pays its tribute; who, linking day to night by interchange, dost grant the candle of the sun to day, and puttest to sleep the clouds of night with the shining mirror of the moon; who inlayest the heavens with the gold of manifold stars, making bright the seat of our upper-air, and filling the sky with the gems of the constellations and with divers soldiery; who changest the face of the heavens, and variest its appearance, and grantest life and population to our airy region, binding it together with law; at whose nod the world grows young, the forest is curled with leafy locks, and clothed in its tunic of blossoms the earth exults; who dost repress and increase the threatening sea, cutting short the course of the fury of the deep, lest the seething of the flood should prevail to bury the region of earth! Disclose the reason to me, who desire it, why thou, a stranger from the skies, seekest the earth, why thou offerest to our world the gifts of thv deity, why thy features are bedewed with a shower of weeping, what the tears on thy countenance foretell ? Weeping is a sufficient and faithful tongue of inner grief.'