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Fear us not: thou dost perceive

Only a friendly crowd,

Who on eager wings have raced to this peak;

And many a prayer had we to speak

Ere we won our father's leave.

But the helping winds sent us swiftly to thee,

For down below to our caves in the sea

Came the clanging of steel so loud

That it startled our sober coyness away,

And without delay

Unsandalled we sped here our winged cars' array.

Alas! Alas!

Daughters of Tethys mother of many lives,

Children of him who encoils all the earth

With the unsleeping flow of his waters,

Father Oceanus, look ye upon me.

See me with what thralls imprisoned

Mid the bleak ridges of the chasm-reft peak

Where my terrible watch must be kept.