Dirce

Do you see the one crossing Dirce’s stream?

Dirce’s ford is certainly deep enough to prevent their retreat.

beside Ismenus’ streams and the fountain of Dirce see the great army of the enemy.

Shaft of the sun, fairest light of all that have dawned on Thebes of the seven gates, you have shone forth at last, eye of golden day, advancing over Dirce’s streams!

Ah, spring of Dirce, and you holy ground of Thebes whose chariots are many, you, at least, will bear me witness how unwept by loved ones, and by what laws I go to the rock-closed prison of my unheard-of tomb!

I am here at the fountains of Dirke and the water of Ismenus.

Daughter of Acheloüs, venerable Dirce, happy virgin, you once received the child of Zeus in your streams, when Zeus his father snatched him up from the immortal fire and saved him in his thigh, crying out:

come Dirce, fount of waters fair;

the rest will I tear apart with my feathered shafts and fill Ismenus full of bloody corpses, and Dirce’s clear stream shall run red with gore.

I shall give him to drink the pure water of Dirce, which the deep-waisted daughters of golden-robed Mnemosyne brought forth beside the fine-walled gates of Cadmus.

Often crowning their hair with wreaths from these contests they appeared beside the streams of Dirce or near the Eurotas, the son of Iphicles, who was of the same city as the race of the Sown Men, and the son of Tyndareus, dwelling among the Achaeans in his highland home of Therapne.

Swelling music will answer the reed-pipe in songs which have come to light beside famous Dirce, after a long time, but like a long-desired child from the wife of a man who has already reached the opposite of youth, who fills his father’s mind with the warmth of love;

Only a mute man does not have Heracles’ name on his lips, and does not always remember the waters of Dirce, which reared him and Iphicles.