The Ursine Rose, or the Sun

but rather labor to strengthen and revere the OLD one with new services. For after Alexander Cardinal Orsini, a Prince of eternal fame and glory, was taken away by an untimely death; and in that one man, both YOU lost half of YOURSELF, a brother german; and I lost a very excellent patron, both of us mourning: indeed, no one has yet been able to repair the loss of a dearest brother for YOU: but for me, YOU alone immediately began to restore the patronage of a snatched-away Maecenas patron of the arts; and you have caused that, although I have not yet finished mourning the LOST PRINCE, my BOOK here might congratulate itself, YOU having been FOUND as PRINCE.

My book, I say, here. The SUBJECT MATTER of which, pleasant both in its novelty and hindered by its difficulty, that I might bring it into the light from the very light of the SUN; I will not deny that I spared no daily or nightly labors: while I watch this SPLENDOR OF THE WORLD with unsleeping eyes; and I follow the most beautiful Star, either trailing or fleeing SHADOWS dragged into the open, or [I contemplate] the unusual BRIGHTNESSES, MORE LUCID than the common splendor of the Sun, which is obvious to everyone, flashing here and there in the same [Sun], and flooding the surface, astonished by this NEW AND UNSEEN SPECTACLE; nor do I explore the courses by which it is assiduously rotated around its own center to monthly and annual conversions, by MODES NEVER BEFORE DISCOVERED; and if I have not yet consumed an age (as he did), I have consumed the eighteenth year among the experiments.

With which so much time, or labor, whatever of new knowledge has been born to me from the sky and the principal Star of the sky; I have dedicated all of it, enclosed in this book, to YOU, THE PRINCE OF THE ORSINI HOUSE, and to the NAME OF THE ORSINI ROSE, not an unmindful or ungrateful client: and so I present the SUN itself, the King of the stars, associated with YOUR ROSE, the QUEEN OF FLOWERS. For while I, secure in YOUR FAVOR, neglect to pluck the ROSE from the gardens of Paestum a Greek city in Italy famous for its roses as if it were STRANGE; behold! I greet the DOMESTIC one, offered to me from YOUR INSIGNIA, for the sake of a good omen, rejoicing and congratulating: and for that reason, not the ROSE of the SUN, nor the juice pressed from the ROSE (which I mentioned the Indians did), but with a changed purpose, I willingly and gladly pour this SUN of mine, and the labor which I mentioned was exhausted in the new exploration of IT, and the precious LIQUOR of TRUTH elicited from there, into the unfading bosom of YOUR ROSE. So that in the future, THIS WHOLE PHENOMENON, distinguished by an admirable variety of shadowed and lucid parts, and conspicuous by their mutual transmutation, and...