Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/203

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Is he removed. No black and biting spite
With base, malicious tooth preys on him here.
He never hears of those base, shameful things
That spawn amid the city's teeming throngs.
It is not his with guilty heart to quake
At every sound; he need not hide his thoughts 495
With guileful words; in pride of sinful wealth
He seeks to own no lordly palace propped
Upon a thousand pillars, with its beams
In flaunting arrogance incased with gold.
No streams of blood his pious altars drench;
No hecatombs of snowy bullocks stand 500
Foredoomed to death, their foreheads sprinkled o'er
With sacred meal; but in the spacious fields,
Beneath the sky, in fearless innocence,
He wanders lord of all. His only guile,
To set the cunning snare for beasts of pray;
And, when o'erspent with labors of the chase,
He soothes his body in the shining stream
Of cool Ilissus. Now swift Alpheus' banks 505
He skirts, and now the lofty forest's deep,
Dense places treads, where Lerna, clear and cool,
Pours forth her glimmering streams.
Here twittering birds make all the woods resound,
And through the branches of the ancient beech
The leaves are all a-flutter in the breeze. 510
How sweet upon some vagrant river's bank,
Or on the verdant turf, to lie at length,
And quaff one's fill of deep, delicious sleep,
Whether in hurrying floods some copious stream
Pours down its waves, or through the vernal flowers
Some murmuring brook sings sweetly as it flows.
The windfall apples of the wood appease 515
His hunger, while the ripening berries plucked
From wayside thickets grant an easy meal.
He gladly shuns the luxuries of kings.
Let mighty lords from anxious cups of gold
Their nectar quaff; for him how sweet to catch
With naked hand the water of the spring! 520