In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
corpora; di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas)
adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi
ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen!
Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelum
unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe,
quem dixere chaos: rudis indigestaque moles
nec quicquam nisi pondus iners congestaque eodem
non bene iunctarum discordia semina rerum.
The will of my spirit bears to speak on forms transfigured into new bodies. Gods, as you changed and changed all things, favor what I have begun and take my song from the beginning of the world until the end of my time. Before the water and the ground, before sky covered everything, one aspect of nature was over the entire globe: Chaos, a disordered, unrefined pile, nothing there but crude weight and, likewise, the discordant seeds of misfits.
