Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v5.djvu/408

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Speak; but if thou hast said all, give us

The favor which we ask, for surely thou remember'st. Pr. The whole term of her traveling has she heard.

But that she may know that not in vain she hears me,

I'll tell what before coming hither she endured,

Giving this as proof of my relations.

The great multitude of words I will omit,

And proceed unto the very limit of thy wanderings.

When, then, you came to the Molossian ground,

And near the high-ridged Dodona, where

Oracle and seat is of Thesprotian Zeus,

And prodigy incredible, the speaking oaks,

By whom you clearly, and naught enigmatically,

Were called the illustrious wife of Zeus

About to be, if aught of these things soothes thee;

Thence, driven by the fly, you came

The seaside way to the great gulf of Rhea,

From which by courses retrograde you are now tempest-tossed.

But for time to come the sea gulf,

Clearly know, will be called Ionian,

Memorial of thy passage to all mortals.

Proofs to thee are these of my intelligence,

That it sees somewhat more than the apparent.

But the rest to you and her in common I will tell,

Having come upon the very track of former words.

There is a city Canopus, last of the land,

By Nile's very mouth and bank;

There at length Zeus makes thee sane,

Stroking with gentle hand, and touching only.

And, named from Zeus' begetting,