O queenly Muse, our mother, hitherward come, I pray,
When the holy Moon brings round the Nemean festal day,
To Aegina the guest-thronged Dorian isle. Where the ripples are sliding
Of Asopian waves, young craftsmen of songs honey-savoured, abiding
Thy coming, are longing to hear thy voice’s great song-burden!
Sooth, diverse deeds ever thirst for many a diverse guerdon,
But victory in these Games above all things loveth Song
Meetest companion of crowns and of triumphs achieved by the strong.
O Muse, unto me full measure of inspiration accord,
And do thou, his daughter, upraise to the cloud-thronged heaven’s Lord
A noble hymn: I will blend it—its strains as in spousals allying
With the lyre and the voices of singers. Aegina’s glorifying
Shall be a delightsome task; for there did the Myrmidons olden
Dwell: on the place where in ancient days were their gatherings holden
By thy favour no shameful reproach did Aristokleides bring
By weakness in that great strife of the strong in the athlete-ring
Of the fivefold grapple, but there in Nemea’s low-lying plain
Won victory’s healing balm for the blows’ overtasking pain.
But if Aristophanes’ son, in whom is the beauty blended
Of glorious goodlihead and glorious deeds, hath ascended
To the heights of heroic achievement, impossible is it that he
Past Heracles’ Pillars should voyage on o’er a trackless sea,
Pillars the Hero-god set for a world-famed witness to men
Of their voyaging’s limits. Monstrous beasts had he quelled ere then
In the seas, and had tracked to the end the fen-floods sluggishly flowing
Till he came to the uttermost bourne that constrained his homeward going,
And he meted the bounds of earth:—but to what far foreland art bearing
On an alien shore, my soul, thy bark over dim seas faring?
Nay, I bid thee for Aiakus summon the Muse, and for Aiakus’ race;
For the flower of justice adorneth the precept, “The good shall thou praise.”
To cherish hot longings for far-away themes is nowise best:
Search rather at home. A fitting theme is the fruit of thy quest
For sweet song’s gracing. When deeds of the heroes of old thou art telling,
Sing the joy of king Peleus in hewing a lance all lances excelling,
How alone with no war-host he compassed Iolkos’ storming and spoiling,
And made captive and bride the Sea-goddess Thetis by strenuous toiling.
Sing of the world-famed might of Telamon, how with aid
Of Iolaus his war-fellow low was Laomedon laid,
And the Amazon Maids of the brazen bows did he face in the fray
With him; nor the edge of his spirit was ever dulled by dismay
The queller of men. It is inborn valour with peril that copeth;
He whose valour of others is learnt is a man that in darkness gropeth.
His will is a wind ever-veering; his feet are unstable aye;
Ineffectual his purpose is still, though achievements untold he essay.
But Achilles the golden-haired, while in Philyra’s home yet he stayed,
Child though he were, made mighty deeds but his sport: he swayed
The short-headed dart in his hands, and, swift as the wild wind’s pinions,
Death to the lions he dealt whom he tracked through their forest-dominions.
Boars also he slew, and the pulsing bodies of boar and lion
Still would he hale to the cave of the Centaur, Zeus’s scion,
At the first when but six years old, but thereafter through all those days,
So that Artemis, yea, and Athene the dauntless beheld with amaze,
As he slew the deer, unholpen of hounds or the net’s hidden guile;
For by fleetness of foot he outran them. This tale told long erewhile
I recall, how that Jason was reared in the cave of the rock-rib rafter
By deep-thoughted Cheiron, who nurtured Asklepius thereafter,
And taught how by herbs and the pain-soothing hand is disease resisted,
And who won for Peleus the Daughter of Nereus, the ivory-wristed,
And fostered for her that goodliest man of men, their son,
And trained up his soul unto greatness by chivalry alone,
That, borne on the swift-rushing wings of the winds o’er the sea’s highway
Unto Troy, he might bide the Lycian and Phrygian and Dardan array
As their battle-cry rang through the clashing of lances, and close undaunted
With the Aethiop spearmen, and set the resolve in his heart firm-planted
That Helenus’ fiery-hearted kinsman from battle-strain
Should return not, nor Memnon their chieftain behold his home again.
Thence flashed it, the splendour of Aiakus’ house, which abideth for aye,
O Zeus! They are thy blood: thine is the contest whereon my lay
Like an arrow hath lit; in its strains young voices the glory are singing
Of the land: for victorious Aristokleides ’tis meetly outringing,
Who hath added another wreath of renown unto this isle’s story,
And hath brightened the Pythian Shrine of the Envoys with visions of glory.
For the issue of all endeavours is seen in the hour of the test,
Whereby alone is it proved what champion is best of the best,
Be he a boy among boys, or a man among men, or again
An elder mid elders, as places in life’s race-course appertain
Unto humankind—yea, four be the excellences attending
Each life, and to each as it comes all heed should a man be lending.
Thou art lacking in none. Farewell, friend! Lo, unto thee am speeding
The Muses’ honey; and blended therewith is milk white-beading
With fairy bubbles the foam of whose mingling mantles around
A chalice of song ushered in by Aeolian flutes’ sweet sound,
Late though it come. Most swift is the eagle of all winged things,
Who suddenly grips in his talons with far-flying swoop of his wings
His blood-stained quarry. But chattering daws o’er the low grounds hover.
On thee, whom the favour of Klio the splendour-throned doth cover
With glory, because of thy spirit, the athlete-champion’s mind,
From Nemea and Megara light, and from Epidaurus, hath shined.