Classic Poem

Songs, lords of the lyre! what God shall we hymn?—what hero's praises?—
What man's fame publish afar?
Pisa doth Zeus own; Herakles stablished Olympia's races
With the regal spoils of his war;
Theron, who honours the guest, whose four steeds raced victorious,
Akragas' stay, let us chant, full flower of an ancestry glorious,
His city's saviour-star.

Toils bravely his fathers endured, and a hallowed home by the river
They reared: they were Sicily's eye
And to crown their inborn worth, Fair Fortune attended them, giver
Of wealth and of dignity.
Son of Kronos and Rhea, enthroned in Olympus, thou lord of the choicest
Of contests by Alpheus' ford, guard, since in our song thou rejoicest,
For their sons ever graciously

Their fatherland-soil! When for right or for wrong hath been woven the tissue
Of our deeds, not Time the father of all can reverse the issue.
Yet oblivion may come of the past
With the dawn of a happier day; for overmastered and slain
By the sunlight of happiness oft is memory's rankling pain,
When broad and high at the last

Prosperity grows by the fiat of God. Yea, of Kadmus' daughters
This thing I have said proved true:—
Sore anguish they suffered, yet mightier blessings from out the waters
Of affliction the stricken ones drew
Mid thunder-crash Semele perished, yet lives in the heavenly star-land;
And Pallas and Zeus and her son, who is crowned with the ivy-garland,
Enfold her with love ever new

With the Sea-maids, the daughters of Nereus, to Ino a life unending
In the deep is ordained for aye
But to mortals no date is appointed whereon death's bolt descending
Shall smite; nor can any man say
When one day, child of the sun, shall in calm peace close with unbroken
Blessing. With sorrow and joy run life's streams, giving no token
How their mutable courses will stray.

So Destiny, she who the line of the fathers of Theron hath guided
To happiness, yet for their god-given bliss hath also provided
In its season a bitter reverse,
Since the hour when met in his journeying Laïus was, and killed
By his doom-driven son, and the word that from Pytho went forth was fulfilled,
The old-time prophecy-curse

Swift Erinys beheld it, and slew by hands with a brother's blood gory
His warrior sons. When died
Polyneikes, Thersander was left to win in a new war glory,
The Adrastids' saviour and pride.
From him these trace their descent; and the son of a prince most meetly
With all praises of song triumphant and lyres outpealing sweetly
This day shall be magnified

Olympia's guerdon he won, and at Pytho and Isthmus the Graces,
Who his kindred have evermore blessed,
Brought to his brother the crowns of the twelve-course four-horse races.
Ay, triumph to pain bringeth rest
Riches with nobleness graced of many things bring fruition,
And they kindle the deep-glowing fire of the huntress of honour, Ambition,
Within their possessor's breast,

A lodestar that beacons afar, by whose light men steer most surely,
If he who doth hold by it knoweth what shall be—that they which impurely
Here lived, shall when they have died
Suffer the penalty: sins that in Zeus's realm of light
Were committed shall One judge there in the underworld Kingdom of Night,
And their awful doom shall decide.

But through sunlitten nights and days a life of bliss untoiling
Is ordained for the righteous-souled.
No more for a meagre pittance they labour the land sore moiling,
Nor on stormy seas are they rolled;
But with them that be honoured of Gods, who had pleasure in leal oath-keeping,
They have joy of a tearless life, while the wicked are endlessly reaping
Sin-harvests too dread to behold.

But they that through those three lives have endured, their spirits refraining
From sin upon each side death,
These traverse the pathway of Zeus, to the Tower of Kronos attaining,
Where the breezes of Ocean breathe
Round the Isles of the Blest, where flowers all-golden like flames are glowing,
Which are drooping from trees of splendour, or float on the flood soft-flowing;
And their heads and their hands they enwreathe,

As it standeth by just Rhadamanthus decreed, the eternal assessor
Of Kronos the husband of Rhea, of her who is throned possessor
Of dominion the universe o'er
And Peleus and Kadmus are numbered amidst the glorified there;
And the heart of Zeus by Thetis' petition was swayed, that she bare
Achilles to that blest shore,

Him who slew the invincible Hector, and Troy's strong pillar did shiver,
And of whom was Kyknus slain
And the Dawn-queen's Aethiop son Many swift shafts lie in my quiver;
To the wise is their meaning plain;
For the common herd need they interpreters. Who is by nature discerning
Is the poet inspired; but the vehement babblers of other men's learning
Croak vanity—crows be the twain!—

At the hallowed eagle of Zeus! O my soul, on the bow be thou aiming—
And at whom in all love wilt thou speed
The renown-giving arrow? To Akragas send thou it, boldly proclaiming—
Bidding Truth of thine oath take heed—
That through years five-score no city on earth hath been known to rear on
Her breast any son more kindly in spirit to friends than Theron,
None of more liberal deed.

Yet praise is by spite ever dogged, wherein never is justice abiding,
But from grasping envy it springs; with its slanders it fain would be hiding
In darkness the good deeds done
By the noble of heart. But, as no man can number the great sea's sands,
So the joys on his fellow-men showered by Theron with lavish hands,
Who telleth the tale of them? None!