It tells the story of Theseus and Ariadne, with details drawn from various sources and original touches based on modern psychology.

[1] Athens assembles to hear news that the serial killers on the south road have been killed by an unknown traveller, acting alone.

Around the campfire, Euaemon, the Greek ship's master, pitying the young, tries to distract them with travellers' tales; but Aegle, the girl who sang the lament, demands to be told the truth about what lies in store.

Euaemon tells the little he knows, including the usual story, that the monster in the Labyrinth is the offspring of Pasiphaë, Queen to Minos, by a bull-god.

At dawn the south wind prevents departure; the party spend three days on the isle, during which time Theseus and Aegle are happy together.

Reaching Crete, the Athenians, wondering at the primitive bull-totems, are led before King Minos and Queen Pasiphaë in Knossos.

As he is led out Theseus praises Ariadne for her courage, loyalty and beauty, adding: "May God give you, / One day, a lover as brave and fair and true!"

Her brilliant little sister Phaedra, who witnessed events in court and who is also smitten by Theseus, urges her to seek help from Daedalus, who built the Labyrinth.

Daedalus, a Greek exile, has long loved Ariadne in silence, this fair-haired daughter of Minos by a Thracian captive-woman of royal blood.

That night the signal is seen by Ariadne; she parts tearfully from Phaedra, and arrives on the beach in time to see the survivors of the Labyrinth staggering down from the hills.

On board, while the exhausted survivors sleep, Theseus tells Ariadne of the night's events: how the Athenian maidens were bathed and perfumed by African eunuchs and dressed as brides; how the captives were led into the cave, down mazy passages and dim chambers, each with statues of the Cretan snake-goddess; how the last chamber contained the horror: the Minotaur on a throne, before a flower-strewn bed, surrounded by the dead; how the priests and guards bound the Athenians with thongs and left.

Hearing this, the horrified Ariadne thinks of the golden tress she left on her father's pillow, as a loving token of farewell.

Approaching Phalerum he forgets to raise the signal white sail, Aegeus commits suicide, and the hero's homecoming is joyless.

Aegeus in Book I:– Ariadne was published by the Cambridge University Press and by the Macmillan Company, New York, in November 1932, in a limited edition of 500 copies.

"The wild Greek hills," Lucas notes in the former, The poem's emphasis on 'true love', on shared values of courage and loyalty, may be seen as its primary theme.

[5] The contrast between light-loving Athens and benighted Minoan Crete, hag-ridden with religion, reflects another authorial preference.

Lucas has studied the natural touch in every scene and every colloquy, giving to images of primitive force a modern psychological dress".

[13] The Listener did not share this regret: "While preserving the great metrical tradition," its reviewer wrote, "Ariadne is a continuous refreshment of it, and is free at once of archaic pedantries and modernist affectations.