CHORUS. [STROPHE.]
Oh, fair the fruits of Leto blow:
A Virgin, one, with joyous bow,
And one a Lord of flashing locks,
Wise in the harp, Apollo:
She bore them amid Delian rocks,
Hid in a fruited hollow.
But forth she fared from that low reef,
Sea-cradle of her joy and grief.
A crag she knew more near the skies
And lit with wilder water,
That leaps with joy of Dionyse:
There brought she son and daughter.
And there, behold, an ancient Snake,
Wine-eyed, bronze-gleaming in the brake
Of deep-leaved laurel, ruled the dell,
Sent by old Earth from under
Strange caves to guard her oracle—
A thing of fear and wonder.
Thou, Phoebus, still a new-born thing,
Meet in thy mother's arms to lie,
Didst kill the Snake and crown thee king,
In Pytho's land of prophecy:
Thine was the tripod and the chair
Of golden truth; and throned there,
Hard by the streams of Castaly,
Beneath the untrodden portal
Of Earth's mid stone there flows from thee
Wisdom for all things mortal.
[ANTISTROPHE.]
He slew the Snake; he cast, men say,
Themis, the child of Earth, away
From Pytho and her hallowed stream;
Then Earth, in dark derision,
Brought forth the Peoples of the Dream
And all the tribes of Vision.
And men besought them; and from deep
Confused underworlds of sleep
They showed blind things that erst had been
And are and yet shall follow
So did avenge that old Earth Queen
Her child's wrong on Apollo.
Then swiftly flew that conquering one
To Zeus on high, and round the throne
Twining a small indignant hand,
Prayed him to send redeeming
To Pytho from that troublous band
Sprung from the darks of dreaming.
Zeus laughed to see the babe, I trow,
So swift to claim his golden rite;
He laughed and bowed his head, in vow
To still those voices of the night.
And so from out the eyes of men
That dark dream-truth was lost again;
And Phoebus, throneed where the throng
Prays at the golden portal,
Again doth shed in sunlit song
Hope unto all things mortal.
[enter a MESSENGER, running.]