Votive Verse for Venus

O Venus, Queen of Beauty, Goddess Love

Return from High Olympus up above

I plead, before your statue, this May morn

As brave-star, bright Aurora, brings the dawn

 

Please hear my prayer, most mighty maid, so mild

I’ve worshipped you from since I was as a child

When I would play upon that sun-kissed shore

Where you once trod the waves, as sea did roar

 

They told me that you’d waded t’wards the land

Across the sun-soaked, searing Grecian sand

That shadowless, you’d walked, but men had missed

The sea snail sleeping on your slender wrist

 

Their lust had made them mad, to beauty blind

They had not grasped you were the goddess kind

O Venus, (Aphrodite if you wish)

For you I’d sell my soul for one sweet kiss!

 

From Mount Olympus, on your gleaming throne

(Encrusted with pure gold and sapphire stone)

Spare me one gracious, gleaming goddess glance

To pierce my aching heart with love-laced lance

 

For Venus, Queen of Beauty, I love you

With passion pure and precious, trusted, true!

I kneel before you on this May Day Morn

As brave-star, bright Aurora, brings the dawn

 

O goddess, from your throne beyond the sky

Speak through your statue; bid it shake or sigh

And I will see in this a sacred sign

That soon, your sweetest love will all be mine!