Or as the months roll on, thy hand will work;
Tell me, Ο deathless Voice, thou child of golden hope!
Antistroph. I.
Thee first, Zeus-born Athena, thee I call,
Divine and deathless One,
And next thy sister, Goddess of our land, 160
Our Artemis, who sits,
Queen of our market, on encircled throne;
And Phœbos, the far-darter! Ο ye Three,[1]
Shine on us, and deliver us from ill!
If e'er before, when storms of woe oppressed,
Ye stayed the fiery tide, Ο come and help us now!
Stroph. II.
Ah me, ah me, for sorrows numberless
Press on my soul;
And all the host is smitten, and our thoughts 170
Lack weapons to resist.
For increase fails of fruits of goodly earth,
And women sink in childbirth's wailing pangs,
And one by one, as flit
The swift-winged birds through air,
So, flitting to the shore of Him who dwells
Down in the darkling West,[2]
Fleeter than mightiest fire,
Thou see'st them passing on.
Antistroph. II.
Yea, numberless are they who perish thus;
And on the earth,
Still breeding plague, unpitied infants lie,
- ↑ The Three named—Athena, Artemis, Phœbos—were the guardian deities of Thebes; but the tendency to bring three names together in one group in oaths and invocations runs through Greek worship generally.
- ↑ Pluto, dwelling where the sun sinks into darkness. The symbolism of the West as the region of dead and evil, of the East as that of light and truth, belongs to the earliest parables of nature.
