To keep within steadfast bounds that wave of ocean resistless;
Hard to fight is the host of the Persians, the people stout-hearted.
Mesode
Yet ah! what mortal can ward the craft of the God all-deceiving?
[*]Who, with a nimble foot, of one leap is easily sovereign?
For Atè, fawning and kind, at first a mortal betraying,
100
Then in snares and meshes decoys him,
Whence one who is but man in vain doth struggle to 'scape from.
Strophe III