Fails never, nor the ceaseless water-spring,
Near neighbour of Cephisus wandering,
That day by day revisiteth the plain.
Nor do the Goddesses the grove disdain,
But chiefly here the Muses quire and sing,
And here they love to weave their dancing ring,
With Aphrodite of the golden rein.

And here there springs a plant that knoweth not
The Asian mead, nor that great Dorian isle,
Unsown, untilled, within our garden plot
It dwells, the grey-leaved olive; ne'er shall guile
Nor force of foemen root it from the spot:
Zeus and Athene guarding it the while!



THE PASSING OF OEDIPOUS--(OEd. Col., 1655-1666.)



How OEdipous departed, who may tell
Save Theseus only? for there neither came
The burning bolt of thunder, and the flame
To blast him into nothing, nor the swell
Of sea-tide spurred by tempest on him fell.
But some diviner herald none may name
Called him, or inmost Earth's abyss became
The painless place where such a soul might dwell.