the moon's favors: Homeric Hymn to Asclepius

2012/06/28

Homeric Hymn to Asclepius

This translation, by Evelyn-White, is in the public domain.

Related Resources

• Primary Texts Index - Public Domain Texts
• Homer

XVI. To Asclepius

(5 lines)

(ll. 1-4) I begin to sing of Asclepius, son of Apollo and healer of sicknesses. In the Dotian plain fair Coronis, daughter of King Phlegyas, bare him, a great joy to men, a soother of cruel pangs. (l. 5) And so hail to you, lord: in my song I make my prayer to thee!

Words whisper, carrying more than one might know, hypostases, rather than mere understanding. Words grow from roots, spawn families, travel and mingle, get lost, get found, and often marry the strangest bedfellows. Like our bodies, our ideas, and our culture, words evolve, handed down to us from a place beyond memory. As the warp and woof of language, words possess the magic to shape the immaterial into the solid things of psyche ~From my intro to AO's The Archives of the Heart

The Platonic tradition may be likened to an underground river that from time to time sends up a spring; wherever its waters flow, the soul is reborn, and with it the conception of intellectual form, the beautiful, and true art.~ Kathleen Raine