Chorus.

Who shall raise thee
From the house of the dead? 
Or what man praise thee
That thy praise may be said? 
Alas thy beauty! alas thy body! alas thine head!

Meleager.

But thou, O mother,
The dreamer of dreams,
Wilt thou bring forth another
To feel the sun’s beams
When I move among shadows a shadow,
and wail by impassable streams?

Oeneus.

What thing wilt thou leave me
Now this thing is done? 
A man wilt thou give me,
A son for my son,
For the light of mine eyes, the desire of my life,
the desirable one?

Chorus.

Thou wert glad above others,
Yea, fair beyond word,
Thou wert glad among mothers;
For each man that heard
Of thee, praise there was added unto thee, as wings
to the feet of a bird.

Oeneus.

Who shall give back
Thy face of old years,
With travail made black,
Grown grey among fears,
Mother of sorrow, mother of cursing, mother of tears?

Meleager.

Though thou art as fire
Fed with fuel in vain,
My delight, my desire,
Is more chaste than the rain,
More pure than the dewfall, more holy than stars
are that live without stain.

Atalanta.

I would that as water
My life’s blood had thawn,
Or as winter’s wan daughter
Leaves lowland and lawn
Spring-stricken, or ever mine eyes had beheld thee
made dark in thy dawn.

Chorus.

When thou dravest the men
Of the chosen of Thrace,
None turned him again
Nor endured he thy face
Clothed round with the blush of the battle,
with light from a terrible place.

Oeneus.

Thou shouldst die as he dies
For whom none sheddeth tears;
Filling thine eyes
And fulfilling thine ears
With the brilliance of battle, the bloom and the beauty,
the splendour of spears.

Chorus.

In the ears of the world
It is sung, it is told,
And the light thereof hurled
And the noise thereof rolled
From the Acroceraunian snow to the ford
of the fleece of gold.

Meleager.

Would God ye could carry me
Forth of all these;
Heap sand and bury me
By the Chersonese
Where the thundering Bosphorus answers
the thunder of Pontic seas.

Oeneus.

Dost thou mock at our praise
And the singing begun
And the men of strange days
Praising my son
In the folds of the hills of home,
high places of Calydon?

Meleager.

For the dead man no home is;
Ah, better to be
What the flower of the foam is
In fields of the sea,
That the sea-waves might be as my raiment,
the gulf-stream a garment for me.

Chorus.

Who shall seek thee and bring
And restore thee thy day,
When the dove dipt her wing
And the oars won their way
Where the narrowing Symplegades whitened the straits
of Propontis with spray?