Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/531

Rh Its goodly steeds and goodly colts I sing,

And, goodly too, its sea;

Ο Son of Cronos, Thee

We own, Thou great Poseidon, Lord and King,

For thou hast made it ours

To boast these wondrous dowers,

First in our city did'st first on horses fleet

Place the subduing bit;

And through the sea the oars well-handled flit,

Following the Nereids with their hundred feet!

Fain would I be where meet,

In brazen-throated war,

The rush of foes who wheel in onset fleet,

Or by the Pythian shore,

Or where the waving torches gleam afar,

Where the Dread Powers watch o'er

Their mystic rites for men that mortal are,

E'en they whose golden key

Hath touched the tongue of priests, Eumolpidæ:

There, there, I deem, our Theseus leads the fight,

And those two sisters, dauntless, undismayed,

Will meet, with eager clamour of delight

That nothing leaves unsaid,

Where through these lands they tread.

Or do they now, perchance,

On to the western slope

Of old Œatis' snowy crest advance,

Hastening on swiftest steed,