No More Learning

From me they heard, and bitter was their wrath,
How those your kinsmen strove to work you wrong,
And how of us were thwarted: then to me
This company of spearmen did they grant,
That honoured I might walk, nor unaware
Die by some secret thrust and on this land
Bring down the curse of death, that dieth not.
Such boons they gave me: it behoves me pay
A deeper reverence from a soul sincere.
Ye, to the many words of wariness
Spoken by me your father, add this word,
That, tried by time, our unknown company
Be held for honest: over-swift are tongues
To slander strangers, over-light is speech
To bring pollution on a stranger's name.
Therefore I rede you, bring no shame on me
Now when man's eye beholds your maiden prime.
Lovely is beauty's ripening harvest-field,
But ill to guard; and men and beasts, I wot,
And birds and creeping things make prey of it.
And when the fruit is ripe for love, the voice
Of Aphrodite bruiteth it abroad,
The while she guards the yet unripened growth.
On the fair richness of a maiden's bloom
Each passer looks, o'ercome with strong desire,
With eyes that waft the wistful dart of love.
Then be not such our hap, whose livelong toil
Did make our pinnace plough the mighty main:
Nor bring we shame upon ourselves, and joy
Unto my foes. Behold, a twofold home--
One of the king's and one the people's gift--
Unbought, 'tis yours to hold,--a gracious boon.
Go--but remember ye your sire's behest,
And hold your life less dear than chastity.

CHORUS

The gods above grant that all else be well.
But fear not thou, O sire, lest aught befall
Of ill unto our ripened maidenhood.
So long as Heaven have no new ill devised,
From its chaste path my spirit shall not swerve.

SEMI-CHORUS

Pass and adore ye the Blessed, the gods of the city
who dwell
Around Erasinus, the gush of the swift immemorial
tide.

SEMI-CHORUS

Chant ye, O maidens; aloud let the praise of
Pelasgia swell;
Hymn we no longer the shores where Nilus to ocean
doth glide.
SEMI-CHORUS

Sing we the bounteous streams that ripple and gush
through the city;
Quickening flow they and fertile, the soft new life of
the plain.

SEMI-CHORUS

Artemis, maiden most pure, look on us with grace
and with pity--
Save us from forced embraces: such love hath no
crown but a pain.

SEMI-CHORUS

Yet not in scorn we chant, but in honour of
Aphrodite;
She truly and Hera alone have power with Zeus and
control.
Holy the deeds of her rite, her craft is secret and
mighty,
And high is her honour on earth, and subtle her
sway of the soul.

SEMI-CHORUS

Yea, and her child is Desire: in the train of his
mother he goeth--
Yea and Persuasion soft-lipped, whom none can deny
or repel:
Cometh Harmonia too, on whom Aphrodite bestoweth
The whispering parley, the paths of the rapture that
lovers love well.

SEMI-CHORUS

Ah, but I tremble and quake lest again they should
sail to reclaim!
Alas for the sorrow to come, the blood and the
carnage of war.
Ah, by whose will was it done that o'er the wide
ocean they came,
Guided by favouring winds, and wafted by sail and
by oar?

SEMI-CHORUS

Peace! for what Fate hath ordained will surely not
tarry but come;
Wide is the counsel of Zeus, by no man escaped or
withstood:
Only I Pray that whate'er, in the end, of this wedlock
he doom,
We as many a maiden of old, may win from the ill
to the good. [7]

[Footnote: 7: The ambiguity of these two lines is reproduced from
the original. The Semi-Chorus appear to pray, in one aspiration,
that the threatened wedlock may never take place, and, _if_ it does
take place, may be for weal, not woe. ]

SEMI-CHORUS

Great Zeus, this wedlock turn from me--
Me from the kinsman bridegroom guard!

SEMI-CHORUS

Come what come may, 'tis Fate's decree.

SEMI-CHORUS

Soft is thy word--the doom is hard.

SEMI-CHORUS

Thou know'st not what the Fates provide.