Youngling divine, I hail thee now,
From beyond the sea thine aid I invoke;
Son flower-fed of the Mother Cow,
Quick with Zeus' breath and his handstroke.
So of the dam with hoof and horn
And enchanted body a babe was born,
Man-child made for mortal lot,
Epaphus, the touch-begot.
The naming of thee where long ago
Our Mother roamed this pastoral earth,
And the calling to mind of a vanished woe
Shall bear witness in trials of later birth;
And more sorrow yet may come into ken,
Though we know not how and we guess not when,
Like ours of to-day and hers of old;
And these at long last shall Time unfold.
To one that watcheth the wild birds winging,
Here at ease in his native bower,
The suppliant song of an alien race
Chance-heard, shall seem as the sweet, sad singing
Of Tereus' Daulian paramour,
The nightingale hidden, the hawk in chase.
Spring and summer for sorrow she grieveth
Under the green leaves weeping her pain
And the life that was passed in homelessness:
Spring and summer the story she weaveth
Of the child .she bore by her own hand slain,
And the wrath of a mother pitiless.
