The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns

Name: The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns
Author: Attributed to Orpheus

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The HymnsXXI. To the Clouds · Lines 1–7

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XXI. To the Clouds · Lines 1–7

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Ancient Greek

p. 86

XXI. ΝΕΦΩΝ

θυμίαμα σμύρναν

Ἠέριαι νεφέλαι, καρποτρόφοι, οὐρανόπλαγκτοι,

ὀμβροτόκοι, πνοιῇσιν ἐλαυνόμεναι κατὰ κόσμον,

βρονταῖαι, πυρόεσσαι, ἐρίβρομοι, ὑγροκέλευθοι,

ἠέρος ἐν κόλπῳ πάταγον φρικώδε’ ἔχουσαι,

πνεύμασιν ἀντίσπαστοι ἐπιδρομάδην παταγεῦσαι,

ὑμᾶς νῦν λίτομαι, δροσοείμονες, εὔπνοοι αὔραις,

πέμπειν καρποτρόφους ὄμβρους ἐπὶ μητέρα γαῖαν.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: XXI. To the Clouds

p. 87

XXI. To the Clouds

fumigation from myrrh

Airy clouds, fruit-nourishing, wandering the heavens,

rain-bearing, driven by the winds throughout the kosmos,

of the thunder, fiery, loud-roaring, watery-pathed,

holding in the bosom of the air a shuddering clatter,

drawn back by the blasts, clattering in headlong course,

you I now beseech, dew-clad, fair-breathing with breezes,

to send fruit-nourishing rains upon mother earth.

1, 7.καρποτρόφος recurs in the last line, transferred from the clouds to the rain they send: the epithet moves from the agent to the gift.

1–5.The addressees are a weather, not a god: clouds in the plural, with no proper name and no myth, addressed exactly as Hera or Poseidon are, in a vocative chain of compound epithets. The Stars at VII were treated the same way. Unlike the Stars, who are Night's children at VII.3, the clouds are given no parentage here — the collection supplies one on the next page, at XXII.7, where Tethys is their mother.

7.The request is rain on the fields, and nothing else. Three hymns in a row now — XIX, XX, XXI — are about the sky, and the third one wants it to rain.

7.The only complete hexameter the collection repeats. πέμπειν καρποτρόφους ὄμβρους ἐπὶ μητέρα γαῖαν closes this hymn and closes LXXXII, to the south wind, sixty-one places later, letter for letter; neither carries an apparatus entry. And the repetition is not of one line only. Both hymns are seven lines; both are built on the same four words — καρποτρόφος, ὀμβροτόκος, νεφέλη and ἠήρ; both spend their first five lines describing wet air in motion and their last two asking for rain. They are the same hymn twice, once to the clouds that carry the rain and once to the wind that drives them. (Found at the final run, reading the volume through as one text; no block pass could have seen it, since the two hymns fall in Blocks 5 and 13.)

About This Reading Edition

The eighty-eight Orphic Hymns and the Prayer to Musaeus, in Ancient Greek and English, with the supplied critical apparatus, explanatory notes, introduction, glossary and editorial matter.

Historical Text and Translation

Orphic Hymns, attributed to Orpheus. Greek text after Eugenius Abel, Orphica (Leipzig and Prague, 1885), pages 57–102.

About Diotimos Editions

This historical edition credits Diotimos Editions as its English translator.

Rights

The ancient Greek source and the 1885 Abel edition are public-domain material. The supplied new English translation and editorial matter are published with the site owner’s authorization. Both supplied original files remain unchanged.