Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v5.djvu/404

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On high inhabit, on well-wheeled carts,

With far-casting bows equipped;

Whom go not near, but to the sea-resounding cliffs

Bending thy feet, pass from the region.

On the left hand the iron-working

Chalybes inhabit, whom thou must needs beware,

For they are rude and inaccessible to strangers.

And thou wilt come to the Hybristes river, not ill named,

Which pass not, for not easy is 't to pass,

Before you get to Caucasus itself, highest

Of mountains, where the stream spurts out its tide

From the very temples; and passing over

The star-neighbored summits, 't is necessary to go

The southern way, where thou wilt come to the man-hating

Army of the Amazons, who Themiscyra one day

Will inhabit, by the Thermedon, where 's

Salmydessia, rough jaw of the sea,

Inhospitable to sailors, stepmother of ships;

They will conduct thee on thy way, and very cheerfully.

And to the Cimmerian isthmus thou wilt come,

Just on the narrow portals of a lake, which leaving

It behooves thee with stout heart to pass the Mœotic straits;

And there will be to mortals ever a great fame

Of thy passage, and Bosphorus from thy name

'T will be called. And leaving Europe's plain

The continent of Asia thou wilt reach.—Seemeth to thee, forsooth,

The tyrant of the gods in everything to be

Thus violent? For he a god, with this mortal