Lover of splendour, above all cities beauty-dowered,
Persephone’s home, who dost dwell by Akragas’ water-meads green
Sheep-pastured, throned on thine hill of the ramparts stately-towered,
With kindly favour of Gods and of men accept, O Queen,
This crown that from Pytho is brought thee: the glory of Midas hailing
Welcome him, him who is champion of Hellas in that flute-strain
Which Pallas Athene devised when she wove into music the wailing
Of the Gorgons fierce, their death-dirge over a sister slain,
The lament that she heard from the awful maids’ snake-heads outshrieking,
As it poured from their lips forth laden with bitterest anguish of grief,
When Perseus had smitten the third, their sister, with bronze death-wreaking,
And bare thence doom to Seriphus’ island-folk and their chief.
Yea, and the wondrous daughters of Phorkys he spoiled of vision,
And bitter for Polydektes his bridal-gift he made,
Bitter his mother’s thraldom, her spousals’ enforced decision,
With the head of Medusa the weirdly beautiful, shorn by the blade
Of Danae’s son, of the shower of gold, as the legend telleth,
Begotten. But when the Maid had released from his labours’ strain
The man she befriended, she framed the manifold music that welleth
From the flute, that her harmonies so might mimic the shrieks of pain
Wild and high from Euryale’s ravening jaws outshrilling.
Her devising it was, but she gave it to mortal men to possess;
And the “Strain of the Many Heads” she named it, the spirit-thrilling
Kindler of hearts to the contests whereinto multitudes press,
Notes poured thick and fast through the thin-beaten bronze and the reeds upspringing
By the burg of the Graces, the city of fair dance-lawns in the close
Of the Nymph of Kephisus, true witnesses they of the dance soft-swinging.
If bliss among mortals there be, ’tis not won but with travail-throes.
Yet a God may accomplish it even to-day—but there is no fleeing
That which of Fate is foredoomed: but surely a time shall be
When a Power that smites with a stroke all-sudden, past man’s foreseeing,
Shall grant thee a boon unhoped for, yet hold back another from thee.