Now dally not, but put our thought in
act.
CHORUS
Zeus, pity our distress, or e’er
we die.
If so he will, your toils to joy will
turn.
CHORUS
Lo, on this shrine, the semblance of a
bird.[2]
Zeus’ bird of dawn it is; invoke
the sign.
CHORUS
Thus I invoke the saving rays of morn.
[Footnote: 2: The whole of this dialogue
in alternate verses is disarranged in the MSS.
The re-arrangement which has approved itself to Paley
has been here followed. It involves, however,
a hiatus, instead of the line to which this note is
appended. The substance of the lost line being
easily deducible from the context, it has been supplied
in the translation.]
Next, bright Apollo, exiled once from
heaven.
CHORUS
The exiled god will pity our exile.
Yea, may he pity, giving grace and aid.
CHORUS
Whom next invoke I, of these other gods?
Lo, here a trident, symbol of a god.
CHORUS
Who [3] gave sea-safety; may he bless
on land!
[Footnote:
3: Poseidon] DANAUS
This next is Hermes, carved in Grecian
wise.
Then let him herald help to freedom won.
DANAUS
Lastly, adore this altar consecrate
To many lesser gods in one; then crouch
On holy ground, a flock of doves that
flee,
Scared by no alien hawks, a kin not kind,
Hateful, and fain of love more hateful
still.
Foul is the bird that rends another bird,
And foul the men who hale unwilling maids,
From sire unwilling, to the bridal bed.
Never on earth, nor in the lower world,
Shall lewdness such as theirs escape the
ban:
There too, if men say right, a God there
is
Who upon dead men turns their sin to doom,
To final doom. Take heed, draw hitherward,
That from this hap your safety ye may
win.
[Enter
the KING OF ARGOS.
Speak—of what land are ye?
No Grecian band
Is this to whom I speak, with Eastern robes
And wrappings richly dight: no Argive maid,
No woman in all Greece such garb doth wear.
This too gives marvel, how unto this land,
Unheralded, unfriended, without guide,
And without fear, ye came? yet wands I see,
True sign of suppliance, by you laid down
On shrines of these our gods of festival.
No land but Greece can read such signs aright.
Much else there is, conjecture well might guess,
But let words teach the man who stands to hear.
