Giving him (?) as booty to the eager hounds that range the air
Verily I do fear the stupid death of the moth.
Thou criest aloud, thou who art but a spectator of such a deed as this.
She waileth the nightingale’s lament.
For all Troy hath beheld by reason of Hector’s fate
He bellowed like a bull whose throat has just been cut.
Neither am I without experience of this manner of address.
Knowing full well, I can laud the race of the Aethiopian land, where seven-channelled Nile rolleth its refreshing tide, fed by abundant, wind-born rain, and therein the fire-eyed sun, beaming forth upon the earth, melteth the snow amid the rocks; and all luxuriant Egypt, filled with the sacred flood, maketh to spring up Demeter’s life-giving grain.
From righteous deception God standeth not aloof.
But times there are when God honoureth the season for untruth.
Nor companion in arms, nor neighbour, let him be to me!
This hoopoe, spectator of his own distress, hath Zeus bedecked in various hue and showed him forth a bird courageous in his full armour, tenanting the rocks. With the new-come spring he will ply the pinion of the white-feathered hawk—for he will display two forms from a single egg, his offspring’s and his own—; but when the grain is threshed in early harvest-time, a parti-coloured wing will direct his course to this side or that. But ever quitting these haunts in loathing he will seek a new home amid the solitary woods and hills.
For kinsfolk know well to envy too.
An anvil to receive the hammer’s blows and to forge the red-hot ore, he, without a groan, endured in silence, like a tunny-fish.
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