Then he leapt to his feet, and he shouted afar o’er the desolate shore,
All dust-begrimed, as a lion that seeking his mate doth roar
Up and down through the forest-gloom: deep glens through many a hill
Far off at the sound of his voice’s thunder shuddering thrill,
And tremble the oxen that roam the meads with exceeding fear,
And the herders of kine: but never a whit dismaying to hear
Was the hero’s cry to his friends when the voice of his shouting they heard.
And they gathered with down-drooped eyes to his side, and they sat at his word
Sore troubled anigh where lay the ship; and the women withal
With the heroes mingled sat; and he spake, and he told them all:
“Hearken, O friends, for in this mine affliction Goddesses three,
In vesture of goatskins girded about, from neck unto knee
Overdrooping their shoulders and waists, as maidens of earth to behold,
Stood over mine head full nigh, and they drew my mantle’s fold
Away from mine head with fingers light, and they bade me arise
From my couch of despair, bade rouse you up in the selfsame wise.
And they bade us to render our mother the nursing-debt again—
Seeing that long in her womb she bare us with travail-pain—
Whensoever the steeds of the swift-wheeled car of the Lord of the Sea
Amphitritê should loose from the yoke. Howbeit it is not in me
To divine what their prophecy meaneth. They named them, that stranger-band,
Heroines, daughters of Libya, and Warders of the Land.
Yea, whatsoever toils we endured in our journeying
By land or by sea, said they, they were ware of everything.
No longer thereafter I saw them in place, but there came between
A mist or a cloud—they appeared, and lo! they were no more seen.”
He spake, and they marvelled all such tale to hear him tell.
Then to the Minyan men a most strange wonder befell:
For out of the sea to the land did a horse gigantic bound
With golden mane far-streaming that tossed his shoulders around.
And with one swift stamp he shook from his shoulders the briny spray,
And onward he galloped with feet like the blast of the wind: straightway
Unto the throng of his comrades did Peleus rejoicing say:
“The steed of the car of the Lord of the Sea!—unyoked hath he been
Even but now by the hands of his dear-loved wife, I ween.
And our mother—none other is this, I divine, than the good ship there,
Argo; for verily us within her womb she bare
With grievous anguish of travail groaning unceasingly.
Her therefore with stalwart strength and with tireless shoulders we
Will uplift, and afar o’er the wastes of the sandy land from the shore
Will we bear her, where yonder steed hath with swift feet sped before.
For he will not, he, sink into the earth, but his hoof-prints shall go
Pointing the way for us inland afar from the sea, I trow.”
So did he speak: of his keen-witted counsel were all they fain.
Lo, this is the song of the Muses, and I but sing their strain,
The Pierides’ servant; and this true tale in mine ears hath been told
That ye, O mightiest far of the sons of the kings of old,
By your manhood and might o’er the sands of Libya’s desert drear
Bare high over earth your galley and all her voyaging-gear,
On your shoulders laid, yea, bare her through long days two and ten,
And nights as many. That cup of affliction and travail then,
What tongue could tell it, which these in their toil filled up full-brim?
Of a truth of the blood of the Deathless they were, such labour grim
Did they take on them, onward driven and on by Necessity’s goad,
Till afar mid the ripples of Trito’s mere how triumphantly strode,
How gladly adown from their stalwart shoulders they set their load!
Then rushing, like unto hounds in the wild hunt’s frenzy-burst,
Sought they a spring, for that now was there added parching thirst
Unto all their affliction and manifold anguish; nor toiled they in vain
Wandering there; for lo, they came to the sacred plain
Where but yesterday Ladon the Serpent of Libya in Atlas’ garden
Kept watch o’er the Apples of Gold; and the Nymphs around their warden,
The Hesperides, rested never, chanting their lovely song.
But now by the arrows of Herakles stricken he lay along
By the trunk of the apple-tree: only the tip of his tail had strength
To quiver yet, but adown from his head, through all the length
Of his dark chine, lifeless he lay. Where the arrows had left in his blood
The bitter gall of the Hydra of Lerna, a swarming brood
Of flies o’er the venom-festering wounds of him crawled and clung.
And thereby the Hesperides over their golden heads had flung
Their white arms, shrilling their wail. And the wanderers suddenly drew
Anear, and to dust and to earth straightway, when the hero-crew
Came hastily on, did they turn even there. But Orpheus was ware
Of the portent divine, and he stood, and he spake to the Nymphs in prayer:
“Divine Ones, lovely and kindly, O Queens, be gracious ye,
Whether amongst the Heavenly Goddesses numbered ye be,
Or the Earthly, or whether they name you the Lone Ones, Nymphs divine,
Come, O ye Nymphs, come, daughters of Ocean’s sacred line!
Appear ye in manifest form to our longing eyes, and show
Some spring gushing forth from the rock, some sacred upwelling flow
From the bosom of Earth, O shapes divine, that the thirst which doth burn
Our tongues without cease may be quenched; and if ever again we return
Unto Achaia-land in our weariful voyaging,
Then, as to the chiefest in heaven, to you which have done this thing
Gifts and libations and feasts with grateful love will we bring.”
So spake he, praying with earnest voice; and they from anear
Pitied their pain. And first did they cause green grass to appear
From the earth, and above the grass rose saplings tall, and these
Thereafter in fullness of bloom grew up into fair young trees:
Tall-standing and straight, high up from the face of the earth they towered.
In a poplar was Hesperê veiled, Erythêis an elm embowered,
And Aiglê a sacred willow. And out of the stems of them, lo!
Appeared they, and like as before they had been, so again did they show,
A marvel exceeding
