Page:Pindar and Anacreon.djvu/173

165 Superior love, and bade the hallow'd fane,

Seat of prophetic truth, Ismenus' name retain.

Harmonia's children! ye whose heroine band,

Assembled by the god's command,

At close of day he bids in social state

Pytho and Themis celebrate,

With earth's truth-speaking centre—to proclaim

Seven-portall'd Thebes and Cirrha's game,

Where Thrasydæus by the third won crown

Hath his paternal hearth's renown

Exalted where great Pylades' command

(Spartan Orestes' friend) ruled o'er the fertile land.

Him, when his slaughter'd father lay,

By Clytemnestra's hand subdued,

The nurse Arsinoe stole away

From the dire scene of fraud and blood;

What time with Agamemnon's soul

She, whom no pity could control,

Urging the sharp and glittering blade,

Dardanian Priam's daughter hurl'd

Cassandra to th' infernal world,

Where flows sad Acheron through realms of shade.

Did her to the unhallow'd stroke

Iphigenia's doom provoke,

Who died, far from her native land,

A victim on Euripus' strand?

Or lust of an adulterous bed,

That to the nightly dalliance led?