Stasimon 2
[Choral 1]
Stranger, in this land of fine horses you have come to earth’s fairest home, the shining Colonus.
Chorus
Here the nightingale, a constant guest, trills her clear note under the trees of green glades, dwelling amid the wine-dark ivy
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and the god’s inviolate foliage, rich in berries and fruit, unvisited by sun, unvexed by the wind of any storm. Here the reveller Dionysus ever walks the ground,
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companion of the nymphs that nursed him.
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And, fed on heavenly dew, the narcissus blooms day by day with its fair clusters; it is the ancient crown of the Great Goddesses.
And the crocus blooms with a golden gleam. Nor do the ever-flowing springs diminish, from which the waters of Cephisus wander, and each day with pure
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current it moves over the plains of the land’s swelling bosom, bringing fertility. Nor have the dancing Muses shunned this place, nor Aphrodite of the golden rein.
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[Choral 2]
And there is a thing such as I have not heard of on Asian ground,
Chorus
nor as ever yet born in the great Dorian isle of Pelops: a plant unconquered, self-renewing, causing terror to destroying enemies.
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It greatly flourishes in this land—the gray-leafed olive, nurturer of children. Youth cannot harm it by the ravages of his hand, nor can any who lives with old age. For the sleepless eye
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of Zeus Morios watches over it, and gray-eyed Athena.
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And I have more praise for this city our mother,
the gift of a great divinity, a glory most great: the might of horses, the might of colts, and the might of the sea. For you, son of Cronus, lord Poseidon, have set her on the throne of this pride,
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by establishing first in our roads the bit that cures the rage of horses. And the shapely oar, well-fitted for the sea, in flying past the land leaps to follow the hundred-footed Nereids.
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