Yet is his heart's desire full hard to trace;
Nathless in every place
Brightly it gleameth, e'en in darkest night,
Fraught with black fate to man's speech-gifted race.
Antistrophe IV.
Stedfast, ne'er thrown in fight,[1]
The deed in brow of Zeus to ripeness brought;
For wrapt in shadowy night,
Tangled, unscanned by mortal sight,
Extend the pathways of his secret thought.
Strophe V.
From towering hopes mortals he hurleth prone 90
To utter doom; but for their fall
No force arrayeth he; for all
That gods devise is without effort wrought.
Seated aloft upon his holy throne,
He from afar works out his secret thought.
Antistrophe V.
But let him mortal insolence behold;—
How with proud contumacy rife,
Wantons the stem in lusty life 100
My marriage craving;—phrenzy over-bold,
Spur ever-pricking, goads them on to fate,
By ruin taught their folly all too late.
- ↑ The metaphor, taken from the custom of the wrestling-school, changes to the tangled paths through a forest.
