Reader

Reader | Orphic Hymns, Hymn 9

Orphic Hymns

Orphic tradition

Hymn 9 | Primary edition: Thomas Taylor

Text

Position

Line 1 of 24

Line RefThomas Taylor | English
1

Primary

Nature [Phusis], all parent, ancient, and divine, O Much-mechanic mother, art is thine;

2

Primary

Heav'nly, abundant, venerable queen, in ev'ry part of thy dominions seen.

3

Primary

Untam'd, all-taming, ever splendid light, all ruling, honor'd, and supremly bright.

4

Primary

Immortal, first-born [Protogeneia], ever still the same, nocturnal, starry, shining, glorious dame.

5

Primary

Thy feet's still traces in a circling course, by thee are turn'd, with unremitting force.

6

Primary

Pure ornament of all the pow'rs divine, finite and infinite alike you shine;

7

Primary

To all things common and in all things known, yet incommunicable and alone.

8

Primary

Without a father of thy wond'rous frame, thyself the father whence thy essence came.

9

Primary

All-flourishing, connecting, mingling soul, leader and ruler of this mighty whole.

10

Primary

Life-bearer, all-sustaining, various nam'd, and for commanding grace and beauty fam'd.

11

Primary

Justice, supreme in might, whose general sway the waters of the restless deep obey.

12

Primary

Aetherial, earthly, for the pious glad, sweet to the good, but bitter to the bad.

13

Primary

All-wife, all bounteous, provident, divine, a rich increase of nutriment is thine;

14

Primary

Father of all, great nurse, and mother kind, abundant, blessed, all-spermatic mind:

15

Primary

Mature, impetuous, from whose fertile seeds and plastic hand, this changing scene proceeds.

16

Primary

All-parent pow'r, to mortal eyes unseen, eternal, moving, all-sagacious queen.

17

Primary

By thee the world, whose parts in rapid flow, like swift descending streams, no respite know,

18

Primary

On an eternal hinge, with steady course is whirl'd, with matchless, unremitting force.

19

Primary

Thron'd on a circling car, thy mighty hand holds and directs, the reins of wide command.

20

Primary

Various thy essence, honor'd, and the best, of judgement too, the general end and test.

21

Primary

Intrepid, fatal, all-subduing dame, life-everlasting, Parca, breathing flame.

22

Primary

Immortal, Providence, the world is thine, and thou art all things, architect divine.

23

Primary

O blessed Goddess, hear thy suppliant's pray'r, and make my future life, thy constant care;

24

Primary

Give plenteous seasons, and sufficient wealth, and crown my days with lasting, peace and health.

Text notes and edition context

Work

Orphic Hymns

The Orphic Hymns compress cosmology, prayer, ritual address, and divine epithets into compact devotional poems especially suited to meditative and oracle-like reading; the corpus now also carries an Abel-based Greek witness aligned as honestly as possible against the existing Taylor English sequence.

Hymns | Original language: Ancient Greek

Late Hellenistic to early Imperial Greek religious poetry, often dated between the 2nd century BCE and 2nd century CE

You are reading Hymn 9.

Primary Edition

Thomas Taylor

English | Verse

Late 18th-century English verse translation

Taylor's version is archaic, charged, and openly mystical, making it one of the strongest public-domain oracle-friendly English renderings of the Orphic Hymns.

This edition uses canonical hymn numbering and line-level segmentation, omitting the prefatory Musaeus proem from the main corpus model.

Source family: English aggregate translations

Project Gutenberg / Internet Archive / Theoi | Public-domain source texts

English prose and verse classics consolidated into a single aggregate dataset.

Primary source: English aggregate translations | Project Gutenberg / Internet Archive / Theoi.