Page:The Poetical Works of William Collins (1830).djvu/109

Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see,
And look not madly wild, like thee? 25

EPODE.
In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice,
The grief-full Muse addrest her infant tongue;
The maids and matrons, on her awful voice,
Silent and pale, in wild amazement hung.

Yet he, the bard^[1] who first invoked thy name, 30
Disdain'd in Marathon its power to feel:
For not alone he nursed the poet's flame,
But reach'd from Virtue's hand the patriot's steel.

But who is he whom later garlands grace,
Who left a while o'er Hybla's dews to rove, 35
With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace,
Where thou and furies shared the baleful grove?

Wrapt in thy cloudy veil, the incestuous^[2] queen
Sigh'd the sad call^[3] her son and husband heard,
When once alone it broke the silent scene, 40
And he the wretch of Thebes no more appear'd.

1. Æschylus.
2. Jocasta.
3. ———οὐδ᾽ ἔτ᾽ ὠρώρει βοή,
   Ἠν μὲν σιωπή· φθέγμα δ᾽ ἐξαίφνης τινὸς
   θώϋξεν αὐτόν, ὥστε πάντας ὀρθίας
   Στῆσαι φόβω δείσαντας ἐξαίφνης τρίχας.
   See the OEdip. Colon. of Sophocles.