Lines 1–493

ALL will I tell truly that thou askest from the utter beginning, and if the tale be prolonged, forgive me, master. For not quietly as of old did the maiden loose the varied voice of her oracles, but poured forth a weird confused cry, and uttered wild words from her bay-chewing mouth, imitating the speech of the dark Sphinx. Thereof what in heart and memory I hold, hear thou, O King, and, pondering with wise mind, wind and pursue the obscure paths of her riddles, whereso a clear track guides by a straight way through things wrapped in darkness. And I, cutting the utter bounding thread, will trace her paths of devious speech, striking the starting-point like winged runner.

Dawn was just soaring over the steep crag of Phegion on swift wings of Pegasus ,leaving his bed by Cerne. Tithonus, brother of thine by another mother, and the sailors loosed in calm weather the cables from the grooved rock and cut the landward ropes. And the centipede fair-faced stork-hued daughters of Phalacra smote maiden-slaying Thetis with their blades, over Calydnae showing their white wings, their stern-ornaments, their sails outspread by the northern blasts of flaming stormwind: then Alexandra opened her inspired Bacchis lips on the high Hill of Doom that was founded by the wandering cow and thus began to speak:

Alas! hapless nurse of mine burnt even aforetime by the warlike pineships of the lion that was begotten in three evenings, whom of old Triton’s hound of jagged teeth devoured with his jaws. But he, a living carver of the monster’s liver, seething in steam of cauldron on a flameless hearth, shed to ground the bristles of his head; he the slayer of his children, the destroyer of my fatherland; who smote his second mother invulnerable with grievous shaft upon the breast; who, too, in the midst of the race-course seized in his arms the body of his wrestler sire beside the steep hill of Cronus, where is the horse-affighting tomb of earth-born Ischenus; who also slew the fierce hound that watched the narrow straits of the Ausonian sea, fishing over her cave, the bull-slaying lioness whom her father restored again to life, burning her flesh with brands: she who feared not Leptynis, goddess of the underworld. But one day with swordless guile a dead corse slew him: yea, even him who of old overcame Hades; I see thee, hapless city, fired a second time by Aeaceian hands and by such remains as the funeral fire spared to abide in Letrina of the son of Tantalus when his body was devoured by the flames, with the winged shafts of the neat-herd Teutarus; all which things the jealous spouse shall bring to light, sending her son to indicate the land, angered by her father’s taunts, for her bed’s sake and because of the alien bride. And herself, the skilled in drugs, seeing the baleful wound incurable of her husband wounded by the giant-slaying arrows of his adversary, shall endure to share his doom, from the topmost towers to the new slain corpse hurtling herself head foremost, and pierced by sorrow for the dead shall breathe forth her soul on the quivering body.

I mourn, twice and three times for thee who lookest again to the battle of the spear and the harrying of thy halls and the destroying fire. I mourn for thee, my country, and for the grave of Atlas’ daughter’s diver son, who of old in a stitched vessel, like an Istrian fish-creel with four legs, sheathed his body in a leathern sack and, all alone, swam like a petrel of Rheithymnia, leaving Zerynthos, cave of the goddess to whom dogs are slain, even Saos, the strong foundation of the Cyrbantes, what time the plashing rain of Zeus laid waste with deluge all the earth. And their towers were hurled to the ground, and the people set themselves to swim, seeing their final doom before their eyes. And on oat and acorn and the sweet grape browsed the whales and the dolphins and the seals that are fain of the beds of mortal men.

I see the winged firebrand rushing to seize the dove, the hound of Pephnos, whom the water-roaming vulture brought to birth, husked in a rounded shell. And thee, cuckold sailor, the downward path of Acheron shall receive, walking no more the byres of they father’s rugged steadings, as one when thou wert arbiter of beauty for the three goddesses. But in place of stables thou shalt pass the Jaws of the Ass and Las, and instead of well-foddered crib and sheepfold and landsman’s blade a ship and oars of Phereclus shall carry thee to the two thoroughfares and the levels of Gytheion, where, on the rocks dropping the bent teeth of the pine-ship’s anchors to guard against the flood, thou shalt rest from gambols they nine-sailed fleet.

And when thou, the wolf, shalt have seized the unwed heifer, robbed of her two dove daughters and fallen into a second net of alien snares and caught by the decoy of the fowler, even while upon the beach she burns the firstlings of the flocks to the Thysad nymphs and the goddess Byne, then shalt thou speed past Scandeia and past the cape of Aegilon, a fierce hunter exulting in thy capture.

And in the Dragon’s Isle of Acte, dominion of the twyformed son of earth, thou shalt put from thee thy desire; but thou shalt see no morrow’s aftermath of love, fondling in empty arms a chill embrace and a dreamland bed. For the sullen husband, whose spouse is Torone of Phlegra, even he to whom laughter and tears are alike abhorred and who is ignorant and reft of both; who once on a time crossed from Thrace unto the coastland which is furrowed by the outflow of Triton; crossed not by sailing ship but by an untrodden path, like some moldwarp, boring a secret passage in the cloven earth, made his ways beneath the sea, avoiding the stranger-slaying wrestling of his sons and sending to his sire prayers which were heard, even that he should set him with returning feet in his fatherland, whence he had come as a wanderer to Pallenia, nurse of the earth-born – he, like Guneus, a doer of justice and arbiter of the Sun’s daughter of Ichnae, shall assail thee with evil words and rob thee of they bridal, casting thee forth in thy desire from thy wanton dove: thee who, regarding not the tombs of Lycus and Chimaereus, glorious in oracles, nor thy love of Antheus nor the pure salt of Aigaeon eaten by host and guest together, didst dare to sin against the gods and to overstep justice, kicking the table and overturning Themis, modeled in the ways of the she-bear that suckled thee.

Therefore in vain shalt thou twang the noisy bowstring, making melodies that bring nor food nor fee; and in sorrow shalt thou come to thy fatherland that was burnt of old, embracing in thine arms the wraith of the five-times-married frenzied descendant of Pleuron. For the lame daughters of the ancient Sea with triple thread have decreed that her bedfellows shall share their marriage-feast among five bridegrooms.

Two shall she see as ravening wolves, winged wanton eagles of sharp eyes; the third sprung from root of Plynos and Carian waters, a half-Cretan barbarian, a Epeian, no genuine Argive by birth: whose grandfather of old Ennaia Hercynna Erinys Thuria, the Sword-Bearer, cut fleshless with her jaws and buried in her throat, devouring the gristle of his shoulder: his who came to youth again and escaped the grievous raping desire of the Lord of Ships and was sent by Erechtheus to Letrina’s fields to grind the smooth rock of Molpis – whose body was served as sacrifice to Rainy Zeus – that he might overcome the wooer-slayer by the unholy device for slaying his father-in-law which the son of Cadmilus devised; who drinking his last cup dived into his tomb in Nereus – the tomb which bears his name – crying a blighting curse upon the race; even he who held the reins of swift-footed Psylla and Harpinna hoofed even as the Harpies.

The fourth again shall she see own brother of the swooping falcon; him whom they shall proclaim to have won the second prize among his brothers in the wrestling of war. And the fifth she shall cause to pine upon his bed, distracted by her phantom face in his dreams; the husband to be of the stranger-frenzies lady of Cyta; even him whom one day the exile from Oenone fathered, turning into men the six-footed host of ants,– the Pelasgian Typhon, out of seven sons consumed in the flame alone escaping the fiery ashes.

And he shall come upon his homeward path, raising the tawny wasps from their holds, even as a child disturbs their nest with smoke. And they in their turn shall come, sacrificing cruelty to the blustering winds the heifer that bare the war-named son, the mother that was brought to bed of the dragon of Scyrus; for whom her husband shall search within the Salmydesian Sea, where she cuts the throats of Greeks, and shall dwell for a long space in the white-crested rock by the outflowing of the marshy waters of the Celtic stream; yearning for his wife whom at her slaying a hind shall rescue from the knife, offering her own throat instead. And the deep waste within the wash of the waves upon the beach shall be called the Chase of the bridegroom, mourning his ruin and his empty seafaring and her that vanished and was changed to an old witch, beside the sacrificial vessels and the lustral water and the bowl of Hades bubbling from the depths with flame, whereon the dark lady will blow, potting the flesh of the dead as might a cook.

And he lamenting shall pace the Scythian land for some five years yearning for his bride. And they, beside the altar of the primal prophet, Cronus, who devours the callow young with their mother, binding themselves by the yoke of a second oath, shall take in their arms the strong oar, invoking him who saved them in their former woes, even Bacchus, the Overthrower, to whom the bull-god, one day in the shrine beside the cavern of Delphinius the Gainful god, the lord of a thousand ships, a city-sacking host, shall make secret sacrifice. And in unlooked-for requital of his offerings the god of Phigaleia, the lusty Torch-god, shall stay the lion from his banquet, entangling his foot in withes, so that he destroy not utterly the cornfield of men, nor lay it waste with tooth and devouring jaws.

Long since I see the coil of trailing woes dragging in the brine and hissing against my fatherland dread threats and fiery ruin. Would that in sea-girt Issa Cadmus had never begotten thee to be the guide of the foemen, fourth in descent from unhappy Atlas, even thee, Prylis, who didst help to overthrow thine own kindred, prophet most sure of best fortune! And would that my father had not spurned the nightly terrors of the oracle of Aesacus and that for the sake of my fatherland he had made away with the two in one doom, ashing their bodies with Lemnian fire. So had not such a flood of woes overwhelmed the land.

And now Palaemon, to whom babes are slain, beholds the hoary Titanid bride of Ogenus seething with the corded gulls. And now two children are slain together with their father who is smitten on the collar-bone with the hard mill-stone, an omen of good beginning; those children which before escaped when cast out to death in an ark through the lying speech of the piper, to whom hearkened the sullen butcher of his children – he the gull-reared, captive of the nets of fishermen, friend of winkle and bandy sea-snail – and imprisoned his two children in a chest. And therewithal the wretch, who was not mindful to tell the bidding of the goddess mother but erred in forgetfulness, shall die upon his face, his breast pierced by the sword.

And now Myrina groans the sea-shores awaiting the snorting of horses, when the fierce wolf shall leap the swift leap of his Pelasgian foot upon the last beach and cause the clear spring to gush from the sand, opening fountains that hitherto were hidden. And now Ares, the dancer, fires the land, with his conch leading the chant of blood. And all the land lies ravaged before my eyes and, as it were fields of corn, bristle the fields of the gleaming spears. And in my ears seems a voice of lamentation from the tower tops reaching to the windless seats of air, with groaning women and rending of robes, awaiting sorrow upon sorrow.

That woe, O my poor heart, that woe shall wound thee as a crowning sorrow, when the dusky, sworded, bright-eyed eagle shall rage, with his wings marking out the land – the track traced by bandied crooked steps – and, crying with his mouth his dissonant and chilly cry, shall carry aloft the dearest nursling of all thy brothers, dearest to thee and to his sire the Lord of Ptoön, and, bloodying his body with talon and beak, shall stain with gore the land, both swamp and plain, a ploughman cleaving a smooth furrow in the earth. And having slain the bull he takes the price thereof, weighed in the strict balance of the scales. But one day he shall for recompense pour in the scales an equal weight of the far-shining metal of Pactolus, and shall enter the cup of Bacchus, wept by the nymphs who love the clear water of Bephyras and the high seat of Leibethron above Pimpleia; even he, the trafficker in corpses, who, fearing beforehand his doom, shall endure to do upon his body a female robe, handling the noisy shuttle at the loom, and shall be the last to set his foot in the land of the foe, cowering, O brother, even in his sleep before thy spear.

O Fate, what a pillar of our house shalt thou destroy, withdrawing her mainstay from my unhappy fatherland! But not with impunity, not without bitter toil and sorrow shall the pirate Dorian host laugh exulting in the doom of the fallen; but by the sterns running life’s last lap shall they be burnt along with the ships of pine, calling full often to Zeus the Lord of Flight to ward off bitter fate from them who perish. In that day nor trench nor defence of naval station nor stake-terraced palisade nor cornice shall avail nor battlements. But, like bees, confused with smoke and rush of flame and hurling of brands, many a diver shall leap from deck to sternpeak and prowneck and benched seats and stain with blood the alien dust. And many chieftains, and many that bore away the choicest of the spoils won by Hellas and glories in their birth, shall thy mighty hands destroy, filled full with blood and eager for battle. But not the less sorrow shall I bear, bewailing, yea, all my life long, thy burial. For pitiful, pitiful shall that day be for mine eyes and crown of all my woes that Time, wheeling the moon’s orb, shall be said to bring to pass.

Ay! me, for they fair-fostered flower,,too, I groan, O lion whelp, sweet darling of thy kindred, who didst smite with fiery charm of shafts the fierce dragon and seize for a little loveless while in unescapable noose him that was smitten, thyself unwounded by thy victim: thou shalt forfeit thy head and stain thy father’s altar-tomb with thy blood.

O, me unhappy! the two nightingales and they fate, poor hound, I weep. One, root and branch, the dust that gave her birth shall, yawning, swallow in a secret cleft, when she sees the approaching feet of lamentable doom, even where her ancestor’s grove is, and where the groundling heifer of secret bridal lies in one tomb with her whelp, ere ever it drew the sweet milk and ere she cleansed her with fresh water from the soilure of childbed. And thee to cruel bridal and marriage sacrifice the sullen lion, child of Iphis, shall lead, imitating his dark mother’s lustrations; over the deep pail the dread butcherly dragon shall cut thy throat, as it were a garlanded heifer, and slay thee with the thrice-descended sword of Candaon, shedding for the wolves the blood of the first oath-sacrifice. And thee, again, an aged captive by the hollow strand, stoned by the public arm of the Doloncians, roused thereto by the railing curses, a robe shall cover with a rain of stones, when thou shalt put on thee sable-tailed form of Maira.

And he, slain beside the altar tomb of Agamemnon, shall deck the pedestal with his grey locks – even he who, a poor prisoner ransomed for his sister’s veil, came to his country devastated with fire, and shrouded in dim darkness his former name – what time the fierce-crested serpent, seller of the land that bred him, kindles the grievous torch and draws the belly-bands and lets slip the travailing terrible ambush, and when the own cousin of the crafty reynard, son of Sisyphus, lights his evil beacon for them who sailed away to narrow Leucophrys and the two islands of child-devouring Porceus.

And I, unhappy, who refused wedlock, within the building of my stony maiden chamber without ceiling, hiding my body in the unroofed tenement of my dark prison: I who spurned from my maiden bed the god Thoraios, Lord of Ptoön, Ruler of the Seasons, as one who had taken eternal maidenhood for my portion to uttermost old age, in imitation of her who abhors marriage, even Pallas, Driver of the Spoil, the Wardress of the Gates – in that day, as a dove, to the eyrie of the vulture, in frenzy shall be haled violently in crooked talons, I who often invoked the Maiden, Yoker of Oxen, the Sea-gull, to help and defend me from marriage. And she unto the ceiling of her shrine carven of wood shall turn up her eyes and be angry with the host, even she that fell from heaven and the throne of Zeus, to be a possession most precious to my great grandfather the King. And for the sin of one man all Hellas shall mourn the empty tombs of ten thousand children – not in receptacles of bones, but perched on rocks, nor hiding in urns the embalmed last ashes from the fire, as is the ritual of the dead, but a piteous name and legends on empty cairns, bathed with the burning tears of parents and of children and mourning of wives.

O Opheltes and Zarax, who keepest the secret places of the rocks, and yet cliffs, the Trychantes, and rugged Nedon, and all ye pits of Dirphossus and Diacria, and thou haunt of Phorcys! what groaning shall ye hear of corpses cast up with decks broken in twain, and what tumult of the surge that may not be escaped, when the foaming water drags men backward in its swirling tides! And how many tunnies with the sutures of their heads split upon the frying-pan! of whom the down-rushing thunderbolt in the darkness shall eat as they perish: when the destroyer shall lead them, their heads yet arching from the debauch, and light a torch to guide their feet in the darkness, sitting at his unsleeping art.

And one, like a diving kingfisher, the wave shall carry through the narrow strait, a naked glutton-fish swept between the double reefs. And on the Gyrae rocks drying his feathers dripping from the sea, he shall drain a second draught of the brine, hurled from the banks by the three-taloned spear, wherewith this dread punisher, that once was a thrall, shall smite him and compel him to run his race among the whales, blustering, like a cuckoo, his wild words of abuse. And his chilly dolphin’s dead body cast upon the shore the rays of Seirius shall wither. And, rotten mummy-fish, among moss and seaweed Nesaia’s sister shall hide him for pity, she that was the helper of the most mighty Quoit, the Lord of Cynaetha. And his tomb beside the Quail that was turned to stone shall trembling watch the surge of the Aegean sea. And bitter in Hades he shall abuse with evil taunts the goddess of Castnion and Melina, who shall entrap him in the unescapable meshes of desire, in a love that is no love but springing for him the bitter death-drawing snare of the Erinyes.

And woes of lamentation shall the whole land hear – all that Aratthos and the impassable Leibethrian gates of Dotion enclose: by all these, yea, even by the shore of Acheron, my bridal shall long be mourned. For in the maws of many sea-monsters shall be entombed the countless swarm devoured by their jaws with many rows of teeth; while others, strangers in a strange land, bereft of relatives, shall receive their graves.

For one Bisaltian Eion by the Strymon, close marching with the Apsynthians and Bistonians, nigh to the Edonians, shall hide, the old nurse of youth, wrinkled as a crab, ere ever he behold Tymphrestus’ crag: even him who of all men was most hated by his father, who pierced the lamps of his eyes and made him blind, when he entered the dove’s bastard bed.

And three sea-gulls the glades of Cercaphus shall entomb, not far from the waters of Aleis: one the swan of Molossus Cypeus Coetus, who failed to guess the number of the brood-sow’s young, when, dragging his rival into the cunning contest of the wild figs, himself, as the oracle foretold, shall err and sleep the destined sleep; the next, again, fourth in descent from Erechtheus, own brother of Aethon in the fictitious tale; and third, the son of him that with stern mattock ploughed the wooden walls of the Ectenes, whom Gongylates, the Counsellor, the Miller, slew and brake his head in pieces with his curse-expelling lash, what time the maiden daughters of Night armed them that were the brothers of their own father for the lust of doom dealt by mutual hands.

And two by the mouth of the streams of Pyramus, hounds of Deraenus, shall be slain by mutual slaughter, and fight their last battle at the foot of the towers of the daughter of Pamphylus. And a steep sea-bitten fortress, even Mabarsus, shall stand between their holy cairns, so that even when they have gone down to the habitations of the dead, they may not behold each other’s tombs, bathed in blood.

And five shall come to the Horned Isle of Wasps and Satrachus and the land of Hylates, and dwell beside Morpho the Lady of Zerynthus.

One shall be he that shall be banished by his father’s taunts from the cave of Cychreus and the waters of Bocarus; even he my cousin, as a bastard breed, the ruin of his kin, the murderer of the colt begotten by the same father; of him who spent his sworded frenzy on the herds; whom the hide of the lion made invulnerable by the bronze in battle and who possessed but one path to Hades and the dead – that which the Scythian quiver covered, what time the lion, burning sacrifice to Comyrus, uttered to his sire his prayer that was heard, while he dandled in his arms his comrade’s cub. For he shall not persuade his father that the Lemnian thunderbolt of Enyo – he the sullen bull that never turned to flee – smote his own bowels with the gift of his bitterest foe, diving in sorrowful leap on the sword’s edge in self-wrought slaughter. Far from his fatherland his sire shall drive Trambelus’ brother, whom my father’s sister bare, when she has given to him who razed the towers as first-fruits of the spear. She it was that the babbler, the father of three daughters, standing up in the council of his townsmen, urged should be offered as dark banquet for the grey hound, which with briny water was turning all the land to mud, spewing waves from his jaws and with fierce surge flooding all the ground. But, in place of the woodpecker, he swallowed in his throat a scorpion and bewailed to Phorcus the burden of his evil travail, seeking to find counsel in his pain.

The second who comes to the island is a country-man and a landsman, feeding on simple food, one of the sons of the oak, the wolf-shaped devourers of the flesh of Nyctimus, a people that were before the moon, and who in the height of winter heated in the ashes of the fire their staple of oaken bread; he shall dig for copper and from the trench drag the soil, mining with mattock every pit. His father the tusk of Oeta slew, crushing his body in the regions of the belly. In sorrow, wretched man, he learnt the truth of the saying that the all-devising fate of men rolls many a thing betwixt the life and the draught of the cup. That same tusk, all flecked with glistening foam, when he had fallen took vengeance on his slayer, smiting with unescapable blow the dancer’s ankle-bone.