For when the sun departeth, night breeds care
For a good seaman; troops cannot be landed
With safety till a ship be snugly berthed.
Then with a quiet mind be vigilant
And ever mindful of the Gods, that so
Ye make their succour certain. For the state,
They shall not need to chide your messenger
Because he's old. For with the spirit of youth
Here in my heart it needs must prompt my tongue.
Chorus.
Ho! Land of hills—
Protectress, held in awe
Of old—now by new bonds of treaty-law
Knit to our hearts—what ills
Must we yet suffer at the hands of men?
Where shall we find a refuge, holy one?
In all this Apian earth is there no glen,
No haunt of darkness hollowed from the sun,
Where we may hide?
I would I were black smoke; a vapour dun
Drawn upwards to the clouds of Zeus' bright day.
Or might I vanish quite away,
Soaring where none should see me; none
Follow: lost in the wide
Of heaven, like dust that needs no wing
To waft it in aerial vanishing.
No refuge left:
No shelter from the slow
Insistent on-fall of unshunnable woe.
As waters in a cleft
