with her hands
from his mighty shoulders the bow and quiver, she hangs them against the
pillar beside his father's seat from a pin of gold, and leads him to his
place and seats him there, while the father welcomes his dear son, giving
him nectar in a golden cup; then do the other Gods welcome him; then they
make him sit, and Lady Leto rejoices, in that she bore the Lord of the
Bow, her mighty son.

[Hail! O blessed Leto; mother of glorious children, Prince Apollo and
Artemis the Archer; her in Ortygia, him in rocky Delos didst thou bear,
couching against the long sweep of the Cynthian Hill, beside a palm tree,
by the streams of Inopus.]

[Leto. With her infants, Apollo and Artemis. From a Vase in the British
Museum. (Sixth Century B.C.): lang104.jpg]

How shall I hymn thee aright, howbeit thou art, in sooth, not hard to
hymn? {104} for to thee, Phoebus, everywhere have fallen all the ranges
of song, both on the mainland, nurse of young kine, and among the isles;
to thee all the cliffs are dear, and the steep mountain crests and rivers
running onward to the salt sea, and beaches sloping to the foam, and
havens of the deep? Shall I tell how Leto bore thee first, a delight of
men, couched by the Cynthian Hill in the rocky island, in sea-girt
Delos--on either hand the black wave drives landward at the word of the
shrill winds--whence arising thou art Lord over all mortals?

Among them that dwell in Crete, and the people of Athens, and isle AEgina,
and Euboea famed for fleets, and AEgae and Peiresiae, and Peparethus by
the sea-strand, and Thracian Athos, and the tall crests of Pelion, and
Thracian Samos, and the shadowy mountains of Ida, Scyros, and Phocaea,
and the mountain wall of Aigocane, and stablished Imbros, and
inhospitable Lemnos, and goodly Lesbos, the seat of Makar son of AEolus,
and Chios, brightest of all islands of the deep, and craggy Mimas, and
the steep crests of Mykale, and gleaming Claros, and the high hills of
AEsagee, and watery Samos, and tall ridges of Mycale, and Miletus, and
Cos, a city of Meropian men, and steep Cnidos, and windy Carpathus, Naxos
and Paros, and rocky Rheneia--so far in travail with the Archer God went
Leto, seeking if perchance any land would build a house for her son.

But the lands trembled sore, and were adread, and none, nay not the
richest, dared to welcome Phoebus, not till Lady Leto set foot on Delos,
and speaking winged words besought her:

"Delos, would that tho