Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/203

Rh Is he removed. No black and biting spite With base, malicious tooth preys on him here. He never hears of those base, shameful things That spawn amid the city's teeming throngs. It is not his with guilty heart to quake At every sound; he need not hide his thoughts With guileful words; in pride of sinful wealth He seeks to own no lordly palace propped Upon a thousand pillars, with its beams In flaunting arrogance incased with gold. No streams of blood his pious altars drench; No hecatombs of snowy bullocks stand Foredoomed to death, their foreheads sprinkled o'er With sacred meal; but in the spacious fields, Beneath the sky, in fearless innocence, He wanders lord of all. His only guile, To set the cunning snare for beasts of pray; And, when o'erspent with labors of the chase, He soothes his body in the shining stream Of cool Ilissus. Now swift Alpheus' banks He skirts, and now the lofty forest's deep, Dense places treads, where Lerna, clear and cool, Pours forth her glimmering streams. Here twittering birds make all the woods resound, And through the branches of the ancient beech The leaves are all a-flutter in the breeze. How sweet upon some vagrant river's bank, Or on the verdant turf, to lie at length, And quaff one's fill of deep, delicious sleep, Whether in hurrying floods some copious stream Pours down its waves, or through the vernal flowers Some murmuring brook sings sweetly as it flows. The windfall apples of the wood appease His hunger, while the ripening berries plucked From wayside thickets grant an easy meal. He gladly shuns the luxuries of kings. Let mighty lords from anxious cups of gold Their nectar quaff; for him how sweet to catch With naked hand the water of the spring!