Le tableau des riches inventions qui sont representees dans le songe de Poliphile

An ornate woodcut headpiece shows two seated winged children flanking a central vase amidst swirling leaves and flowers.

TO MR. DE VERVILLE.

An ornate initial letter Q decorated with scrolling leaves.

When for the utility of our Republic,
I see you so often seek the stream
Which borrows its course from the bubbling of that water
That Pegasus drew from the holy Boeotian mount Mount Helicon, home of the Muses:
I want to accompany you, VERVILLE, to the Dropsical man,
Who drinks at every moment, and whose brain
Always dreams of the humor that leads him to the grave,
Desiring the subject which is most harmful to him.
But thinking afterward of the immortal renown,
By which the Hippocrene the "Horse-spring" created by Pegasus, source of poetic inspiration eternalizes your name,
I immediately find my comparison vain.
For the dropsical body drinking runs to its death,
But you, quite the opposite, animate yourself more strongly,
Incessantly drinking the crystal of Hypocrene.

Now you put to death the envy
Of those who call us wanderers,
For by this Philosophy
You triumph over the ignorant.

An ornate woodcut headpiece shows a central grotesque face flanked by two birds among scrolling leaves.

TO MR. DE VERVILLE,

On the Discourses of Poliphile.

An ornate initial letter T decorated with scrolling foliage.

You have finally found, wise and learned VERVILLE,
A subject of merit and suited to your humor.
When I read Poliphile the "Lover of Many Things," the protagonist of the story in his natural state,
I believed that your Spirit followed the same labor.

This sweet and learned Lover, filled with the knowledge
That is found now only among the Curious,
By the most beautiful path of the richest sciences
Leads a beautiful Soul to the most beautiful place in the Heavens.

Love gives him strength, and the object of his Beauty
Turns his passions upon the turns of her eye:
As the beautiful Marigold by natural force
Always turns its face to the rays of its Sun.

Love is the torch of a soul of merit
Which raises itself and pushes itself to seek the perfect:
Those who do not have this desire for their sure conduct,
Will never produce a great effect in great designs.

To serve the Beauty who alone commands him,
And who joins virtues to her perfections:
He works without ceasing, and courageous he stretches
All the most vivid effort of his conceptions.

That makes him enter into the holy Cabala a tradition of mystical interpretation
Of the Chemical secrets referring to alchemy where he finds the light:
And if he makes some other beautiful point in Heaven,
He is always carried on the wings of Love.

He knows the truth of pure medicines,
By the essence known to the most hidden simples medicinal plants:
And ingeniously draws from common roots,
Marvelous effects not yet sought after.

Then in the Antiquity of the ruins of a great temple,
Upon the broken remains of lost ornaments,
By a point that will have only him for an example,
He finds the practice and order of the remainder.