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Sang of the Saviour of Ships, the Child of the Glorious Sire,{570}

Artemis, she that hath those crags of the sea in her keeping,

The Lady that wardeth Iolkos-land. And the fishes leaping

Up from the deep sea came, and, drawn by the spell of the lay,

Both small and great followed gambolling over the watery way.

And as when in the track of a shepherd, the warder of flocks on the wold,

Follow sheep that have fed to the full of the grass, a throng untold,

And he goeth before with his shrill reed piping them home to the fold,

As sweetly he fluteth a shepherd’s strain,—so over the seas

Followed the fishes: on wafted her ever the chasing breeze.

And ere long melting in haze the Pelasgians’ land of corn{580}

Sank out of sight; and past Mount Pelion’s cliffs were they borne

Aye running onward; and sank in the offing the Sepian strand,

And sea-girt Skiathos rose, and a far-away gleam of sand,

The Peiresian beach and Magnesian, clear in the summer air

On the mainland; and lo, the barrow of Dolops: at eventide there