Crossword-Solution: PROEM 5 letters, 34 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 9

BOOK IV PROEM I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought, Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides, Trodden by step of none before.

Seest thou not, Besides, how drops of water falling down Against the stones at last bore through the stones? BOOK V PROEM O WHO can build with puissant breast a song Worthy the majesty of these great finds? Or who in words so strong that he can frame The fit laudations for deserts of him Who left us heritors of such vast prizes, By his own breast discovered and sought out?-- There shall be none, methinks, of mortal stock.

BOOK VI PROEM 'Twas Athens first, the glorious in name, That whilom gave to hapless sons of men The sheaves of harvest, and re-ordered life, And decreed laws; and she the first that gave Life its sweet solaces, when she begat A man of heart so wise, who whilom poured All wisdom forth from his truth-speaking mouth; The glory of whom, though dead, is yet to-day, Because of those discoveries divine Renowned of old, exalted to the sky.

The majesty and power of the whole passage—especially of what may be called the theme or proem (beginning “The mind through all her being is immortal”)—can only be rendered very inadequately in another language.

This long proem, prefixed to a work intended not to have any, may, however, serve to show how human purposes in the most trifling, as well as the most important affairs, are liable to be controlled by the course of events.