The Greek Anthology
I
Worship in Spring (1)
Theaetetus
Now at her fruitful birth-tide the fair green field flowers out in
blowing roses; now on the boughs of the colonnaded cypresses the
cicala, mad with music, lulls the binder of sheaves; and the careful
mother-swallow, having fashioned houses under the eaves, gives
harbourage to her brood in the mud-plastered cells: and the sea
slumbers, with zephyr-wooing calm spread clear over the broad ship-
tracks, not breaking in squalls on the stern-posts, not vomiting foam
upon the beaches. O sailor, burn by the altars the glittering round of
a mullet or a cuttle-fish, or a vocal scarus, to Priapus, ruler of
ocean and giver of anchorage; and so go fearlessly on thy seafaring to
the bounds of the Ionian Sea.
