That I might bid thee die not! Peace; no more. 420 CHORUS. A godlike race of grief the Gods have set For these to run matched equal, heart with heart. PRAXITHEA. Child of the chief of Gods, and maiden crowned, Queen of these towers and fostress of their king, Pallas, and thou my father's holiest head, A living well of life nor stanched nor stained, O God Cephisus, thee too charge I next, Be to me judge and witness; nor thine ear Shall now my tongue invoke not, thou to me Most hateful of things holy, mournfullest 430 Of all old sacred streams that wash the world, Ilissus, on whose marge at flowery play A whirlwind-footed bridegroom found my child And rapt her northward where mine elder-born Keeps now the Thracian bride-bed of a God Intolerable to seamen, but this land Finds him in hope for her sake favourable, A gracious son by wedlock; hear me then Thou likewise, if with no faint heart or false The word I say be said, the gift be given, 440 Which might I choose I had rather die than give Or speak and die not. Ere thy limbs were made Or thine eyes lightened, strife, thou knowest, my child, 'Twixt God and God had risen, which heavenlier name Should here stand hallowed, whose more liberal grace Should win this city's worship, and our land To which of these do reverence; first the lord Whose wheels make lightnings of the foam-flowered sea Here on this rock, whose height brow-bound with dawn Is head and heart of Athens, one sheer blow 450 Struck, and beneath the triple wound that shook The stony sinews and stark roots of the earth Sprang toward the sun a sharp salt fount, and sank Where lying it lights the heart up of the hill, A well of bright strange brine; but she that reared Thy father with her same chaste fostering hand Set for a sign against it in our guard The holy bloom of the olive, whose hoar leaf High in the shadowy shrine of Pandrosus Hath honour of us all; and of this strife 460 The twelve most high Gods judging with one mouth Acclaimed her victress; wroth whereat, as wronged That she should hold from him such prize and place, The strong king of the tempest-rifted sea Loosed reinless on the low Thriasian plain The thunders of his chariots, swallowing stunned Earth, beasts, and men, the whole blind foundering world That was the sun's at morning, and ere noon Death's; nor this only prey fulfilled his mind; For with strange crook-toothed prows of Carian folk 470 Who snatch a sanguine life out of the sea, Thieves keen to pluck their bloody fruit of spoil From the grey fruitless waters, has their God Furrowed our shores to waste them, as the fields