IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS
Fled beyond Europe's land
And Europe's sea, fled safe but sick at heart,
Away from home and kin,
Into the alien wilderness of Asia,
What sort of men would leave the holy streams
Of Dirce, or the reeds 400
Green-growing in Eurotas, to explore
A bitter beach, to dare these ominous rocks
Where the seas meet in fog,
Where Artemis, among Her colonnades
Demanding sacrifice, 40 5
Receives upon her altar human blood?
The Fourth Maiden
Why have they urged the oarsmen of their ship
To shake the clinging sea
With a great stroke and to accelerate
With rush of rivalry the racing wind? 410
Was it to sweep the shores
For riches and to vie in bearing home,
Each to upbuild his house,
The treasures and the trophies of the world?
That glittering hope is immemorial
And beckons many men 415
To their undoing. Ever insatiate
They sail the sea and look to foreign towns
To fill their ships with spoil.
But some men never find prosperity,
For all their voyaging,
While others find it with no voyaging. 420
The Third Maiden
How have they passed the peril of the Rocks
That Clash and of the coast
Of Phineus heavy with broken waves? 425
I wonder if they sailed across that reach
Of sea where mariners
Boast to have looked on Ocean's Fifty Daughters
387