Queen Earth, all bounteous giver of honey-hearted wealth,
7
how kindly, it seems, you are to some,
and how intractable and rough for those with whom you are angry.
Sailors, who rove the seas and whom a hateful fate has made as
8
the shy sea-fowl, living an unenviable life,
observe the reverence due to Zeus who rules on high, the god of strangers;
for terrible is the vengeance of this god afterwards for whosoever has sinned.
Strangers, a contrary wind has caught you:
9
but even now take me aboard and you shall make your voyage.
Another sort of pine shall bear a better fruitThe
10
than you upon the heights of furrowed, windy Ida.
For there shall mortal men get the iron that Ares loves
so soon as the Cebrenians shall hold the land.
Glaucus, watchman of flocks, a word will I put in your heart.
11
First give the dogs their dinner at the courtyard gate,
for this is well. The dog first hears
a man approaching and the wild-beast coming to the fence.
Goddess-nurse of the young,Hecate: cp. Hesiod, give ear to my prayer, and grant that this woman
12
may reject the love-embrace of youth
and dote on grey-haired old men
whose powers are dulled, but whose hearts still desire.
Children are a man’s crown, towers of a city;
13
horses are the glory of a plain, and so are ships of the sea;
wealth will make a house great, and reverend princes
seated in assembly are a goodly sight for the folk to see.
But a blazing fire makes a house look more comely upon a winter’s day,
when the Son of Cronos sends down snow.
Potters, if you will give me a reward, I will sing for you.
14
Come, then, Athena, with hand upraised over the kiln.
Let the pots and all the dishes turn out well
and be well fired: let them fetch good prices
and be sold in plenty in the market, and plenty in the streets.
Grant that the potters may get great gain and grant me so to sing to them.
But if you turn shameless and make false promises,
then I call together the destroyers of kilns,
Shatter and Smash and Charr and Crash
and Crudebake who can work this craft much mischief.
Come all of you and sack the kiln-yard and the buildings: let the
whole kiln be shaken up to the potter’s loud lament.
As a horse’s jaw grinds, so let the kiln grind
