Urania
Pegasus to Paradise Lost: Invoke.
We just read about Bellerophon from Homer, including his quest to kill the Chimera. Mythology buffs might notice a detail missing from Homer's account.
By most accounts, Bellerophon was aided by the winged white stallion, Pegasus. We met Pegasus earlier, emerging from the neck of Medusa.
Bellerophon rode his winged horse toward Olympus. Zeus punished his impiety by sending a gadfly to sting the horse, who then threw his rider.
The winged horse became a symbol for divine inspiration, but also for hubris. Artistic genius is a visitation from the divine. Mistake that visitation as personal ability and you risk a Bellerophon-like fall.
We find these themes in John Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton has finished describing the "War in Heaven" and now "descends" to describe Creation.
Milton prays to Urania, the Greek Muse of Astronomy. But he re-imagines her as the Holy Spirit—the same divine voice that inspired Moses to write Genesis.
What follows is not narrative itself, but a prayer, similar to Hesiod's "Hymn to the Muses" or Homer's "Sing to me, Muse."
John Milton
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Descend from Heaven, Urania, if that is rightly your name—you whose divine voice, when I follow it, bears me above the Olympian hill, beyond the flight of Pegasean wing.
I invoke not the bare name but the reality it signifies; for you are neither one of the nine Muses nor a dweller on old Olympus’ height, but heavenly-born.
With Eternal Wisdom, your sister, you conversed and played in the presence of the Almighty Father, who was well pleased by your celestial song.
Led up by you into the Heaven of heavens, I have dared, an earthly guest, to draw empyreal air, tempered safely by your hand.
Now, with equal safety, guide me down again and return me to my native element, lest from this unbridled flying steed I be dismounted.
As once Bellerophon fell, though from a lower clime, so I fear to fall on the Aleian field, to wander there in error and forlorn.
Yet half my theme remains unsung, though now confined within narrower bounds, within the visible diurnal sphere.
I more safely sing with my mortal voice, not turned hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days—on evil days and among evil tongues.
I am hemmed in by darkness, dangers, and solitude; yet I am not alone while you visit my slumbers nightly, or come when morn purples the East.
Still govern my song, Urania, and grant it a fit audience, though few; but drive far away the barbarous dissonance of Bacchus and his revellers.
They are that wild race whose rout tore the Thracian bard in Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears for rapture until the savage clamor drowned both harp and voice.
The Muse could not defend her son; do not you likewise fail the one who implores you, for you are heavenly, while she was but an empty dream.
Milton wrote this while completely blind and hiding from political enemies. He felt surrounded by darkness and danger, fearing he would be destroyed before he could finish.
Take a note from Milton: when you need to do your best and most dangerous work, start with an invocation.