Last, of our quarters with the Arcadian chiefs. For courteous entertainment, welcome warm, Sad, reverential homage, had our prince From all, for his great lineage and his woes; All which he own'd, and praised with grateful mind. But still over his speech a gloom there hung, As of one shadow'd by impending death; And strangely, as we talk'd, he would apply The story of spots mention'd to his own; Telling us, Arne minded him, he too Was saved a babe, but to a life obscure, Which he, the seed of Heracles, dragg'd on Inglorious, and should drop at last unknown, Even as those dead unepitaph'd, who lie In the stone coffins at Orchomenus. And, then, he bade remember how we pass'd The Mantinean Sanctuary, forbid To foot of mortal, where his ancestor, Named AEpytus like him, having gone in, Was blinded by the outgushing springs of brine. Then, turning westward to the Adder's Hill-- _Another ancestor, named, too, like me,_ _Died of a snake-bite_, said he, _on that brow;_ _Still at his mountain-tomb men marvel, built_ _Where, as life ebb'd, his bearers laid him down._ So he play'd on; then ended, with a smile: _This region is not happy for my race._ We cheer'd him; but, that moment, from the copse By the lake-edge, broke the sharp cry of hounds; The prickers shouted that the stag was gone. We sprang upon our feet, we snatch'd our spears, We bounded down the swarded slope, we plunged Through the dense ilex-thickets to the dogs. Far in the woods ahead their music rang; And many times that morn we coursed in ring The forests round that belt Cyllene's side; Till I, thrown out and tired, came to halt On that same spur where we had sate at morn. And resting there to breathe, I watch'd the chase-- Rare, straggling hunters, foil'd by brake and crag, And the prince, single, pressing on the rear Of that unflagging quarry and the hounds. Now in the woods far down I saw them cross An open glade; now he was high aloft On some tall scar fringed with dark feathery pines, Peering to spy a goat-track down the cliff, Cheering with hand, and voice, and horn his dogs. At last the cry drew to the water's edge-- And through the brushwood, to the pebbly strand, Broke, black with sweat, the antler'd mountain-stag, And took the lake. Two hounds alone pursued, Then came the prince; he shouted and plunged in. --There is a chasm rifted in the base Of that unfooted precipice, whose rock Walls on one side the deep Stymphalian Lake; There the lake-waters, which in ages gone Wash'd, as the marks upon the hills still show, All the Stymphalian plain, are now suck'd down. A headland, with one aged plane-tree crown'd, Parts from this cave-pierced cliff the shelving bay Where first the chase plunged in; the bay is smooth, But round the headland's point a current sets,