Sister, I too beside the sea complain,
    A bird that hath no wing. 
Oh, for a kind Greek market-place again,
For Artemis that healeth woman’s pain; ’
    Here I stand hungering. 
Give me the little hill above the sea,
The palm of Delos fringed delicately,
The young sweet laurel and the olive-tree
    Grey-leaved and glimmering;
O Isle of Leto, Isle of pain and love;
The Orbed Water and the spell thereof;
Where still the Swan, minstrel of things to be,
    Doth serve the Muse and sing!

[Antistrophe I.]

Ah, the old tears, the old and blinding tears
    I gave God then,
When my town fell, and noise was in mine ears
Of crashing towers, and forth they guided me
Through spears and lifted oars and angry men
    Out to an unknown sea. 
They bought my flesh with gold, and sore afraid
    I came to this dark East
To serve, in thrall to Agamemnon’s maid,
This Huntress Artemis, to whom is paid
    The blood of no slain beast;
Yet all is bloody where I dwell, Ah me! 
Envying, envying that misery
That through all life hath endured changelessly. 
    For hard things borne from birth
Make iron of man’s heart, and hurt the less. 
’Tis change that paineth; and the bitterness
Of life’s decay when joy hath ceased to be
    That makes dark all the earth.

      Behold, [strophe 2.]
    Two score and ten there be
    Rowers that row for thee,
And a wild hill air, as if Pan were there,
    Shall sound on the Argive sea,
    Piping to set thee free.

    Or is it the stricken string
    Of Apollo’s lyre doth sing
Joyously, as he guideth thee
    To Athens, the land of spring;
    While I wait wearying?

    Oh, the wind and the oar,
    When the great sail swells before,
With sheets astrain, like a horse on the rein;
    And on, through the race and roar,
    She feels for the farther shore.

      Ah me, [antistrophe 2.]
    To rise upon wings and hold
    Straight on up the steeps of gold
Where the joyous Sun in fire doth run,
    Till the wings should faint and fold
    O’er the house that was mine of old: 

    Or watch where the glade below
    With a marriage dance doth glow,
And a child will glide from her mother’s side
    Out, out, where the dancers flow: 
    As I did, long ago.

    Oh, battles of gold and rare
    Raiment and starred hair,
And bright veils crossed amid tresses tossed
    In a dusk of dancing air! 
    O Youth and the days that were!

[enter king thoas, with soldiers.]

Thoas. 
Where is the warden of this sacred gate,
The Greek woman?  Is her work ended yet
With those two strangers?  Do their bodies lie
Aflame now in the rock-cleft sanctuary?