Olympian 6: For Agesias of Syracuse

Who seeks a goodly bower to raise,
Conspicuous to the stranger's eye,
With gold the lintel overlays,
And clothes the porch in ivory.

So bright, so bold, so wonderful,
The choicest themes of verse I cull,
To each high song a frontal high!

But lives there one whose brows around
The green Olympian wreath is bound;
Prophet and priest in those abodes
Where Pisans laud the sire of gods,
And Syracusa's denizen?
Who, 'mid the sons of mortal men,
While Envy's self before his name
Abates her rage, may fitlier claim
Whate'er a bard may yield of fame?
For sure, to no forbidden strife,
In hallowed Pisa's field of praise,
He came, the priest of blameless life!
Nor who in peace hath passed his days,
Marring with canker sloth his might,
May hope a name in standing fight
Nor in the hollow ship to raise.

By toil, illustrious toil alone,
Of elder times the heroes shone;
And, bought by like emprize, to thee,
O warrior priest, like honour be!

Such praise as good Adrastus bore
To him, the prophet chief of yore,
When, snatched from Thebes' accursed fight,
With steed, and car, and armour bright,
Down, down he sank to earthy night.

When the fight was ended,
And the sevenfold pyres
All their funeral fires
In one sad lustre blended,
The leader of the host
Murmured mournfully,
"I lament the eye
Of all mine army lost!
To gods and mortals dear,
Either art he knew;
Augur tried and true,
And strong to wield the spear!"
And. by the powers divine,
Such praise is justly thine,
O Syracusian peer.
For of a gentle blood thy race is sprung,
As she shall truly tell, the Muse of honeyed tongue.

Then yoke the mules of winged pace,
And, Phintis, climb the car with me;
For well they know the path to trace
Of yonder victor's pedigree.
Unbar the gates of song, unbar!
For we to-day must journey far,
To Sparta and to Pitane.
She, mournful nymph, and nursing long
Her silent pain and virgin wrong,
To Neptune's rape a daughter fair,
Evadne of the glossy hair
(Dark as the violet's darkest shade),
In solitary sorrow bare.
Then to her nurse the infant maid
She weeping gave, and bade convey
To high Phersana's hall away;
Where woman-grown, and doomed to prove
In turn a god's disastrous love,
Her charms allured the Lord of Day.
Nor long the months, ere, fierce in pride,
The painful tokens of disgrace
Her foster-father sternly eyed,

Fruit of the furtive god's embrace.
He spake not, but, with soul on flame,
He sought th' unknown offender's name,
At Phoebus' Pythian dwelling-place.
But she, beneath the greenwood spray,
Her zone of purple silk untied;
And flung the silver clasp away

That rudely prest her heaving side;
While, in the solitary wood,
Lucina's self to aid her stood,
And fate a secret force supplied.
But who the mother's pang can tell,
As sad and slowly she withdrew,
And bade her babe a long farewell,

Laid on a bed of violets blue? —
When, ministers of Heaven's decree
(Dire nurses they and strange to see),

Two scaly snakes of azure hue
Watched o'er his helpless infancy,
And, rifled from the mountain bee,
Bare on their forky tongues a harmless honey dew.
Swift roll the wheels! from Delphos home
Arcadia's car-borne chief is come;

But, ah! how changed his eye!
His wrath is sunk, and past his pride,
"Where is Evadne's babe," he cried,
"Child of the Deity?
'T was thus the augur god replied,
Nor strove his noble seed to hide;
And to his favoured boy, beside,

The gift of prophecy,
And power beyond the sons of men
The secret things of fate to ken.
His blessing will supply."
But vainly, from his liegemen round,
He sought the noble child;
Who, naked on the grassy ground,
And nurtured in the wild,
Was moistened with the sparkling dew

Beneath his hawthorn bower;
Where morn her wat'ry radiance threw
Now golden bright, now deeply blue,
Upon the violet flower.
From that dark bed of breathing bloom
His mother gave his name;
And lamus, through years to come,
Will live in lasting fame;
Who, when the blossom of his days

Had ripened on the tree,
From forth the brink where Alpheus strays,
Invoked the god whose sceptre sways
The hoarse-resounding sea;
And, whom the Delian isle obeys,

The archer deity.
Alone amid the nightly shade,
Beneath the naked heaven he prayed,
And sire and grandsire called to aid;
When, lo! a voice that loud and dread

Burst from the horizon free:
"Hither!" it spake, "to Pisa's shore!
My voice, O son! shall go before;
Beloved, follow me!"

So, in the visions of his sire, he went
Where Cronium's scarred and barren brow
Was red with morning's earliest glow,
Though darkness wrapt the nether element.
There in a lone and craggy dell
A double spirit on him fell,
Th' unlying voice of birds to tell,
And (when Alcmena's son should found,
The holy games in Elis crowned)
By Jove's high altar evermore to dwell,
Prophet and priest! From him descend
The fathers of our valiant friend,
Wealthy alike and just and wise,
Who trod the plain and open way.
And who is he that dared despise
With galling taunt the Cronian prize,
Or their illustrious toil gainsay,
Whose chariots whirling twelve times round
With burning wheels th' Olympian ground,
Have gilt their brow with glory's ray?
For not the steams of sacrifice
From cool Cyllene's height of snow,
Nor vainly from thy kindred rise
The heaven-appeasing litanies
To Hermes, who, to men below,
Or gives the garland or denies:
By whose high aid, Agesias, know,
And his, the thunderer of the skies,
The olive wreath hath bound thy brow!

Arcadian! yes, a warmer zeal
Shall whet my tongue thy praise to tell!
I feel the sympathetic flame
Of kindred love;— a Theban I,
Whose parent nymph from Arcady
(Metope's daughter, Thebe) came.
Dear fountain goddess, warrior maid,
By whose pure rills my youth hath played;
Who now assembled Greece among,
To car-borne chiefs and warriors strong,
Hath wove the many-coloured song.
Then, minstrel! bid thy chorus rise
To Juno, queen of deities,
Parthenian lady of the skies!

For, live there yet who dare defame
With sordid mirth our country's name;
Who tax with scorn our ancient line,
And call the brave Boeotians swine? —
Yet, JEneas, sure thy numbers high
May oharm their brutish enmity;
Dear herald of the holy Muse,
And, teeming with Parnassian dews,
Cup of untasted harmony!
That strain once more! The chorus raise
To Syracusa's wealthy praise,
And his — the lord whose happy reign
Controls Trinacria's ample plain,
Hiero, the just, the wise,
Whose steamy offerings rise
To Jove, to Ceres, and that darling maid,
Whom, rapt in chariot bright,
And horses silver-white,
Down to his dusky bower the lord of hell conveyed.
Oft hath he heard the Muses' string resound
His honoured name; and may his latter days,
With wealth and worth, and minstrel garlands crowned,
Mark with no envious ear a subject praise,
Who now from fair Arcadia's forest wide
To Syracusa, homeward, from his home
Returns, a common care, a common pride
(And whoso darkling braves the ocean's foam,
May safeliest moored with twofold anchor ride);
Arcadia, Sicily, on either side
Guard him with prayer; — and thou who rul'st the deep,
Fair Amphitrite's lord! in safety keep
His tossing keel; and evermore to me
No meaner theme assign of poesy!