A Hymn to Artemis

Far-shooting mistress of meadows and forests
You are the venerable lady of beasts;
Artemis, twin of all-seeing Apollo,
Huntress who wields the moon silvery bow.
Truly a goddess, your beauty’s a marvel:
Luminous silver and liquid bright marble
Wrapped in a chiton of flowing white mist
Bearing a diamond snake wrapped round your wrist
From which your arrows fly out from your car
Drawn by four stags with the fury of centaurs.
White dogs with red ears all bounce round the archeress
Rushing before the sweet offspring of old Okeanos;
Forty-nine nymphs with the wings of young cranes
Follow the goddess with song as her train.

You are the grassy earth plows have not cut,
Forests whose trees are not felled for men’s huts
Pure as a northern stream born from the thawing
Ice with the buds of the first days of Spring.
Gate of the East, you are there at each birth,
Gate of the West as the passage of death.
Culling protectoress playful and cruel
Bringing untamed things beneath your own rule
You are the Great and the Dread Key of Nature
For in your arrows lay primeval power:
Keres of sickness will flee from the bright
Flash of those arrows in which you delight
But if the shafts are unleashed in your wrath
Then they will bring on us sudden swift death.

Virgin aloof and indifferent to tie
Woven from feeling that’s weak in your eyes
Hunting through Heaven or running through fields
With the uncanny blue torch that you wield
Guide those who love and respect woodland paths,
Keeping them from what provokes your dread wrath.

Santiago del Dardano Turann