Here, and upon it as a blast of death Blowing, the keen wrath of a fire-souled king, A strange growth grafted on our natural soil, A root of Thrace in Eleusinian earth Set for no comfort to the kindly land, 50 Son of the sea's lord and our first-born foe, Eumolpus; nothing sweet in ears of thine The music of his making, nor a song Toward hopes of ours auspicious; for the note Rings as for death oracular to thy sons That goes before him on the sea-wind blown Full of this charge laid on me, to put out The brief light kindled of mine own child's life, Or with this helmsman hand that steers the state Run right on the under shoal and ridge of death 60 The populous ship with all its fraughtage gone And sails that were to take the wind of time Rent, and the tackling that should hold out fast In confluent surge of loud calamities Broken, with spars of rudders and lost oars That were to row toward harbour and find rest In some most glorious haven of all the world And else may never near it: such a song The Gods have set his lips on fire withal Who threatens now in all their names to bring 70 Ruin; but none of these, thou knowest, have I Chid with my tongue or cursed at heart for grief, Knowing how the soul runs reinless on sheer death Whose grief or joy takes part against the Gods. And what they will is more than our desire, And their desire is more than what we will. For no man's will and no desire of man's Shall stand as doth a God's will. Yet, O fair Mother, that seest me how I cast no word Against them, plead no reason, crave no cause, 80 Boast me not blameless, nor beweep me wronged, By this fair wreath of towers we have decked thee with, This chaplet that we give thee woven of walls, This girdle of gate and temple and citadel Drawn round beneath thy bosom, and fast linked As to thine heart's root--this dear crown of thine, This present light, this city--be not thou Slow to take heed nor slack to strengthen her, Fare we so short-lived howsoe'er, and pay What price we may to ransom thee thy town, 90 Not me my life; but thou that diest not, thou, Though all our house die for this people's sake, Keep thou for ours thy crown our city, guard And give it life the lovelier that we died. CHORUS.