Whirleth on eddies of dark thought
My bodeful heart;
Yet, against hope, the gods I pray,
That, false to augury, my lay 970
Futile may fall, with vain foreboding fraught.
Strophe II.
Never will perfect health confess
Her limit sated; though disease,
Neighbour, with party-wall, against her press.
Sailing with prosperous course elate,
Strikes on the hidden reef man's proud estate.
Then if reluctant Fear, with well-poised sling, 980
His bales doth into ocean fling,
Riseth once more the bark; and though
With evil freighted to the full,
Floateth secure the lightened hull.
So likewise, gift of ample worth
From Zeus, the year's increase,
Whose teeming harvests in the furrows grow,
Quells the disease of dearth.
Antistrophe II.
But when on earth the crimson gore
Of man hath fallen, never more
May charm or spell the vanished life evoke;
Hence he of old, whose mystic lore 990
Was skilled the dead from Hades to restore,
Fell, blasted by the Thunderer's warning stroke.
†Now did not Fate—a heaven-sent Fate—
Baffle my impulse, ere too late,
