Idyll 18

18. The Epithalamium of Helen Once, then, in Sparta, at the house of golden-haired Menelaus,

maidens with blooming hyacinth in their hair

set up a dance before the newly painted bridal chamber,

the first twelve of the city, a great glory of Laconian women,

when the younger son of Atreus, having wooed

the beloved Helen, shut her in with him.

And all of them sang, beating time to one strain

with their interweaving feet, and the house rang with the wedding-song.

So early then have you fallen asleep, dear bridegroom?

Are you too heavy in the knee? Are you fond of sleep?

Did you drink deep, when you flung yourself into bed?

If you were so eager to sleep at the proper hour, you should have slept alone,

and left the girl to play with girls beside her loving mother

till deep dawn, since both tomorrow and on the morrow,

and from year to year, Menelaus, this is your bride.

Happy bridegroom, some good man sneezed for you as you came

to Sparta, like the other chiefs, that you might succeed.

Alone among the demigods you shall have Zeus, son of Cronos, for father-in-law.

The daughter of Zeus has come beneath one blanket with you,

such as no other of the Achaean women treads the earth.

Surely she will bear some great child, if she bears one like the mother.

We all, her companions of one age, who ran the same course,

anointed like men, by the baths of the Eurotas,

four times sixty girls, the maiden youth of the land,

of whom not one is without fault, when she is matched with Helen.

The rising Dawn shows a fair face,

lady Night, and the white spring when winter is loosed;

so too golden Helen shone among us.

As the tall grain rises, an ornament to the rich field,

or the cypress to the garden, or the Thessalian horse to the chariot,

so rosy-skinned Helen is an ornament to Lacedaemon.

No one winds from the basket such work as hers,

nor in the carven loom, weaving with the shuttle,

cut from the long beams a closer web.

Nor does anyone know how to strike the lyre so,

singing of Artemis and broad-breasted Athena,

as Helen, in whose eyes all desires dwell.

O fair, O graceful girl, you are now a housewife;

but we will go at dawn to the running-ground and to the meadow grasses

to gather sweet-breathing garlands,

remembering you much, Helen, as suckling

lambs long for the teat of the ewe that bore them.

First of all we will plait you a garland of low-growing lotus

and lay it under a shady plane-tree,

and first, taking liquid oil from a silver flask,

we will let it drip beneath the shady plane-tree;

and letters will be written on the bark, that a passer-by

may read, in Dorian fashion: Worship me; I am Helen's tree.

Farewell, bride; farewell, bridegroom with the noble father-in-law.

May Leto grant you, Leto the nurse of children,

a fair offspring; and may Cypris, the goddess Cypris, grant equal love

for each other; and may Zeus, Zeus son of Cronos, grant imperishable wealth,

that it may pass from noble to noble again.

Sleep, breathing love and longing into each other's breast,

but do not forget to wake at dawn.

We too will return at morning, when the first singer

lifts his fair-feathered neck from his perch and crows.

Hymen, O Hymenaeus, rejoice in this marriage.