Mother mine, O Thebe of shield all-golden,
Me shall thy sovran behest embolden,
How full soever mine hands be, to lay
All other service aside for to-day.
O Delos, thou for whose exaltation
Hath my soul been outpoured, have no indignation!
What to a son true-hearted can be
More dear than a mother? Ah, yield to my plea,
Isle of Apollo! By grace of Heaven
Shall coupled fulfilment ere long be given
Unto hymnal-homages twain by me,
When to Him of the hair unshorn I come paying
Due honour with choral dance-arraying
In Keos by sea-waves weltered about—
Strains hailed by her shipmen with jubilant shout—
And honour the Isthmian ridge that doth sunder
Two seas that against its crag-walls thunder.
To Kadmus’ people from Isthmus have gone
Six crowns in her athlete-contests won
To grace with triumphant victory’s glory
My motherland, where, as is told in story,
Of Alkmena was born that aweless son
At whom quaked Geryon’s Hounds, that never had quaked before.
For Herodotus frame I an honour-lay, for his four-horse team,
And the reins that himself swayed, needing none other man’s chariot-lore.
I will sing so that he as a Kastor or lolaus shall seem;
For these of all heroes were mightiest charioteers on earth.
Unto the one Lacedaemon, Thebes to the other gave birth.
More athlete-contests did these adventure
Than any of champions beside dared enter,
And with brazen tripods their halls they graced,
And with cauldrons and goblets of gold rich-chased;
For they tasted the rapture of strife victorious,
And they bore thence garlands of triumph glorious;
And ever their prowess shone clear and bright,
Alike in the course where in eagle-flight
Raced runners with vestureless limbs white-flashing,
And when with the shields on their shoulders clashing
Men ran arrayed in the harness of fight,
And in all the deeds of their hands—in hurling
The javelin, and when they sped far-whirling
Across the field the discus of stone:—
For as yet was no fivefold contest known;
But each of the several strifes was striven
By itself, and to each was its own prize given.
So, many a time and oft, their hair
Wreathed with the victory-garlands fair,
These twain where Dirke’s fount upleapeth,
Or where Eurotas’ swift flood sweepeth,
Bowed thanking the nurturing waters there,
By Dirke, Iphikles’ son, his descent from the Dragon who drew;
By Eurotas, Tyndareus’ scion, who dwelt the Achaians among,
In his highland home of Therapnae. And now farewell unto you!
O’er Poseidon and holy Isthmus I cast the mantle of song,
And over Onchestus’ shores; and as this man’s honours I tell,
I will sing of the fate to Asopodorus his sire that befell.
And Orchomenus’ fields in my lay shall be chanted,
Henceforth by his father’s memory haunted,
Who was cast on her strand, a shipwrecked wight,
From the boundless waters, in evil plight;
But with welcoming kindness that land embraced him.
Yet his house’s fortune hath now upraised him
To behold once more the unclouded ray
Of prosperity’s sun of the former day.
Yea, he who hath suffered sore tribulation
Wins forethought for pain’s one compensation.
And bears it thenceforth in his heart for aye.
If a man seek noble achievement’s attaining,
With his soul’s full energies upward straining,
Unsparing alike of cost and pains,
Meet is it that when at the last he gains
The prize, our ennobling praise he inherit
Lavished on him with ungrudging spirit.
For easy it is for the bard inspired,
When by hard toil won is the goal desired,
To acclaim his endeavours with glad laudation,
And, along with the man, that the fame of his nation
Be set on high to be world-admired.
Sweet unto diverse men is the meed that from labour they reap,
To the shepherd, the ploughman, the fowler, to him who is fed from the sea.
Yet of these each strives but the wolf of hunger at bay to keep;
But who wins in the Games renown, or in battle victory,
When all men extol his achievement, receiveth the highest gain,
For praises as flowers on his head do strangers and citizens rain.
O, well it beseemeth our lips, the awaking
Of thanksgiving-praise to the King earth-shaking,
Who is also our neighbour, Kronos’ son,
He who sped of his kindness our chariots on,
Who is God of the swift steed goalward racing.
Meet is it withal that our song be praising,
Amphitryon, those great sons of thine,
And the Minyan valley’s recess divine,
And Eleusis’ Grove world-celebrated
To the Goddess Demeter consecrated,
And Euboea’s course’s curving line.
And with these I acclaim, as in holy paean,
Thy sacred precinct by heroes Achaean
Reared, Protesilaus, in Phylake.
But to tell over every victory
Which Hermes the Lord of the Games hath given
To the steeds that in many a race have striven
To win for Herodotus triumph’s bay,
The narrowing limits of this my lay
Take from me. Yea, and often the keeping
Of silence bringeth a richer reaping
Of joy, seeing Envy is balked of her prey.
Upborne on the shining wings of the sweet-voiced Muses nine,
With garlands from Pytho, with choicest wreaths from Alpheus’ flood
And Olympia’s contests won, may he his hands entwine
For the honour of Thebes seven-gated. But if one secretly brood
Over hoarded wealth, and at other men mouth, he considereth not
That to death he is rendering up his soul—and his name shall rot.