Or as when ’twixt the low-browed banks of Pactolus’ fair-flowing stream {1300}
The swans are upraising their song, and the meadow of dewy gleam
Murmureth round, and murmur the river’s ripples fair;
So the handmaidens bowing low in the dust their golden hair,
All through the night were uplifting their pitiful wail of despair.
And now out of life had they slidden, had vanished from human ken,
And the name and the fame of them never more had been heard among men,
Those noblest of heroes!—their task unaccomplished had ended then:
Howbeit the Heroine-nymphs had pity of them as they pined
In helpless despair, the Warders of Libya, they that did find