CHORUS FROM OEDIPUS AT COLONOS
Stranger, this is shining Colonos,
Famed for horses, loveliest place.
Nightingales pour forth their song
From wine-dark depths of ivy where they dwell
Close to the god's inviolate bowers.
Heavy with fruit and never visited
By scorching sun or tearing wind.
Here Dionysos revelling runs
The nymphs that nursed him, his companions.
Each dawn, narcissus clusters, washed
In the sky dew, upraise their crowns,
Those worn of old by the great goddesses,
And crocuses like shafts of sunlight show.
Fed by eternal streams, the fountains
Of Cephysus fan through the plains
Bringing their swelling breasts increase.
Nor are the Muses absent from this place.
And here a miracle, a thing unknown
In Asia, flourishes perpetually-
The self-renewing vast-trunked olive tree,
Bastion for us against our enemies
And for Athenian children, nurturer.
Nor youth nor age can cause it damage
For Zeus smiles on it, and grey-eyed
Athena holds it in her keeping gaze.
And most of all, I have to praise the horse
Poseidon's gift to this land, glorious,
Running beside white horses of the waves.
And Colonos is where Poseidon taught
Man bit and bridle for the horse the horse
To tame the wild colt and to curb his speed:
And taught him carve the wood for prows and oars
Chasing the Nereids through the waves.
Stephen Spender's most recent book, with David Hackney, is
China
Diary,
published in 1983 by Harry
N.
Abrams, Inc.
