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But like to the shaft it rose of a poplar tall and slim:

Even such was the measure thereof to behold in height and in girth.

Swiftly his arrow-fraught quiver hath Herakles cast to the earth

With the shafts therein: from his shoulders the lion’s hide did he strip.

With his brass-heavy club at its roots he smote, till he loosed earth’s grip.

Low down did he grasp the stem about with either hand,

Putting trust in his might: with shoulder against it thrust did he stand

With feet wide set. From the ground, deep-rooted albeit it grew,

Hath his grip upheaved it with all the clods that clave thereto.{1200}

And as when unawares the mast of a ship, in the very hour

When Orion’s storm-fraught setting is working in baleful power,

Is struck from on high by a tempest’s swiftly-swooping squall,

And with snapped stays rent from its box, and the wedges therewithal,

Even so he upwrenched that tree; and he gathered up arrows and bow,

And the lion’s hide, and his club; and he hasted him backward to go.

But Hylas the while with a pitcher of brass from the throng hath hied