2Since thou delighting in the woods hast gone unto thy mother streams, Not to be scorned, Agni, is that return of thine when from afar thou now art here.

3O'er pungent smoke host thou prevailed, and thus art thou benevolent. Some go before, and others round about thee sit, they in whose friendship thou hast place.

4Him who had passed beyond his foes, beyond continual pursuits, Him the unerring Ones, observant, fou nd in floods, couched like a lion in his lair.

5Him wandering at his own free will, Agni here hidden from our view, Him Matarisvan brought to us from far away produced by friction, from the Gods.

6O Bearer of Oblations, thus mortals received thee from the Gods, Whilst thou, the Friend of man, guardest each sacrifice with thine own power, Most Youthful One.

7Amid thy wonders this is good, yea, to the simple is it clear, When gathered round about thee, Agni, lie the herds where thou art kindled in the morn.

8Offer to him who knows fair rites, who burns with purifying glow, Swift envoy, active, ancient, and adorable: serve ye the God attentively.

9Three times a hundred Gods and thrice a thousand, and three times ten and nine have worshipped Agni, For him spread sacred grass, with oil bedewed him, and stablished him as Priest and Sacrificer.

10Those Stakes upon the earth with rings that deck them seem to the eye like horns of horned creatures; Or, as upraised by priests in invocation, let them assist us in the rush to battle.

11Lord of the Wood, rise with a hundred branches. with thousand branches may we rise to greatness, Tlou whom this hatchct, with an edge well whetted for great felicity, hath brought before us. HYMN IX. 1. WE as thy friends have chosen thee, mortals a God, to be our help, The Waters' Child, the blessed, the r esplendent One, victorious and beyond compare.