O divine Muse, our mother, I pray thee come unto this Dorian isle
Aigina stranger-thronged, for the sacred festival of the Nemean
games[1]: for by the waters of Asopos[2] young men await thee, skilled
to sing sweet songs of triumph, and desiring to hear thy call.

For various recompense are various acts athirst; but victory in the
games above all loveth song, of crowns and valiant deeds the fittest
follower. Thereof grant us large store for our skill, and to the king
of heaven with its thronging clouds do thou who art his daughter begin
a noble lay; and I will marry the same to the voices of singers and to
the lyre.

A pleasant labour shall be mine in glorifying this land where of old
the Myrmidons dwelt, whose ancient meeting-place Aristokleides through
thy favour hath not sullied with reproach by any softness in the
forceful strife of the pankration; but a healing remedy of wearying
blows he hath won at least in this fair victory in the deep-lying
plain of Nemea.

Now if this son of Aristophanes, being fair of form and achieving
deeds as fair, hath thus attained unto the height of manly excellence,
no further is it possible for him to sail untraversed sea beyond the
pillars of Herakles, which the hero-god set to be wide-famed witnesses
of the end of voyaging: for he had overcome enormous wild-beasts on
the seas, and tracked the streams through marshes to where he came to
the goal that turned him to go back homeward, and there did he mark
out the ends of the earth.

But to what headland of a strange shore, O my soul, art thou carrying