Prophecy (Vaticinium)

The whole palace lies open to a crowd of pimps, mimes, and ministers of wickedness, and the three-forked tongues of informers soothe the ears of the generous Prince. Indeed, there is no place for good men. Depart, poets! No Maecenases meet you with a serene brow, no Augustus exists, the Muses have abandoned the palaces and the chambers of kings; songs are a care to no one, and no coin glitters in the Apollinean coffer. Nor do the sacred bards alone suffer such things; but everyone who ponders what is not understood by the common people also laments poverty and harsh labors—those who remain free from the weight of the earthly mass, who do not seek profits, but rather things pleasing to a disciplined mind, or who satisfy their soul with ambrosia or sweet nectar, for to know oneself is to taste the feasts of the gods. He who examines the Father of things, three and one, and observes the mystical dogmas of divine Moses; and whoever probes the ethereal minds and the sacred recesses of wisdom, and explores the causes of nature with long investigation, and then wandering through all the elements, [asks] where all things are corrupted and generated by motion; and he who looks around the star-bearing sphere far and wide, and rejoices to know the eternal laws of the signs, the eclipse of the moon, and the sun covered in rust, and the celestial regions, and the sliding stars, and the poles, and everything of heaven’s radiance that he admires and its axes. And also he who grasps with the pure light of the mind why number has an end, a source, and an origin,