The Purifications

112. The Healer and Prophet
Ye friends, who in the mighty city dwell
Along the yellow Acragas hard by
The Acropolis, ye stewards of good works,
The stranger's refuge venerable and kind,
All hail, O friends! But unto ye I walk
As god immortal now, no more as man,
On all sides honored fittingly and well,
Crowned both with fillets and with flowering wreaths.
When with my throngs of men and women I come
To thriving cities, I am sought by prayers,
And thousands follow me that they may ask
The path to weal and vantage, craving some
For oracles, whilst others seek to hear
A healing word 'gainst many a foul disease
That all too long hath pierced with grievous pains.

113.
Yet why urge more, as if forsooth I wrought
Some big affair — do I not far excel
The mortals round me, doomed to many deaths!

114.
O friends, I know indeed in these the words
Which I will speak that very truth abides;
But greatly troublous unto men alway
Hath been the emulous struggle of Belief
To reach their bosoms.

115. Expiation and Metempsychosis
There is a word of Fate, an old decree
And everlasting of the gods, made fast
With amplest oaths, that whosoe'er of those
Far spirits, with their lot of age-long life,
Do foul their limbs with slaughter in offense,
Or swear forsworn, as failing of their pledge,
Shall wander thrice ten thousand weary years
Far from the Blessed, and be born through time
In various shapes of mortal kind, which change
Ever and ever troublous paths of life :
For now Air hunts them onward to the Sea;
Now the wild Sea disgorges them on Land;
Now Earth will spue toward beams of radiant Sun ;
Whence he will toss them back to whirling Air —
Each gets from other what they all abhor.
And in that brood I too am numbered now,
A fugitive and vagabond from heaven,
As one obedient unto raving Strife.

116.
Charis abhors intolerable Fate.

117.
For I was once already boy and girl,
Thicket and bird, and mute fish in the waves.

118. This Earth of Ours
I wept and wailed, beholding the strange place.

119.
From what large honor and what height of bliss
Am I here fallen to move with mortal kind!

120. This Sky-Roofed World
And then we came unto a roofed cave.

121. This Vale of Tears
A joyless land,
Where Slaughter and Grudge, and troops of Dooms besides,
Where shriveled Diseases and obscene Decays,
And Labors, burdened with the water-jars,
Do wander down the dismal meads of Bane.

122.
There was Earth-mother,
There the far-peering Virgin of the Sun,
And bloody Quarrel and grave-eyed Harmony,
And there was Fair and Foul and Speed and Late,
Black-haired Confusion and sweet maiden Sure.

123.
Growth and Decay, and Sleep and Roused-from-sleep,
Action and Rest, and Glory many-crowned,
And Filth, and Silence and prevailing Voice.

124.
O mortal kind! O ye poor sons of grief!
From such contentions and such sighings sprung!

125. The Changing Forms
For from the living he the dead did make,
Their forms exchanging. . .

126.
All things doth Nature change, enwrapping souls
In unfamiliar tunics of the flesh.

127.
The worthiest dwellings for the souls of men,
When 'tis their lot to live in forms of brutes,
Are tawny lions, those great beasts that sleep
Couched on the black earth up the mountain side ;
But, when in forms of beautiful plumed trees
They live, the bays are worthiest for souls.

128. The Golden Age
Nor unto them
Was any Ares god, nor Kydoimos,
Nor Zeus, the king of gods, nor Kronos, nor
Poseidon then, but only Kypris queen. . .
Whom they with holy gifts were wont to appease,
With painted images of living things,
With costly unguents of rich fragrancy,
With gentle sacrifice of taintless myrrh,
With redolent fumes of frankincense, of old
Pouring libations out upon the ground
Of yellow honey; not then with unmixed blood
Of many bulls was ever an altar stained;
But among men 'twas sacrilege most vile
To reave of life and eat the goodly limbs.

129. The Sage
Was one among them there, a supreme man
Of vastest knowledge, gainer of large wealth
Of understanding, and chief master wise
Of diverse works of skill and wisdom all;
For whensoe'er he sought with scope and reach
Of understanding, then 'twas his to view
Readily each and every thing that e'er
In ten or twenty human ages throve.

130. Those Days
All things were tame, and gentle toward men,
All beasts and birds, and friendship's flame blew fair.

131. The Divine
For since, O Muse undying, thou couldst deign
To give for these our paltry human cares
A gateway to thy soul, O now much more,
Kalliope of the beautiful dear voice,
Be near me now beseeching! — whilst I speak
Excelling thoughts about the blessed gods.

132.
O well with him who hath secured his wealth
Of thoughts divine, O wretched he whose care
Is shadowy speculation on the gods!

133.
We may not bring It near us with our eyes,
We may not grasp It with our human hands,
With neither hands nor eyes, those highways twain
Whereby Belief drops into minds of men.

134.
For 'tis adorned with never a manlike head,
For from Its back there swing no branching arms,
It hath no feet nor knees alert, nor form
Of tufted secret member; but It lives,
One holy mind, ineffable, alone,
And with swift thoughts darts through the universe.

135.
But the wide law of all extends throughout
Broad-ruling ether and the vast white sky.

136. Animal Sacrifice
Will ye not cease from this great din of slaughter ?
Will ye not see, unthinking as ye are,
How ye rend one another unbeknown?

137.
The father lifteth for the stroke of death
His own dear son within a changed form,
And slits his throat for sacrifice with prayers —
A blinded fool! But the poor victims press,
Imploring their destroyers. Yet not one
But still is deaf to piteous moan and wail.
Each slits the throat and in his halls prepares
A horrible repast. Thus too the son
Seizes the father, children the mother seize,
And reave of life and eath their own dear flesh.

138.
Drawing the soul as water with the bronze.

139.
Ah woe is me ! that never a pitiless day
Destroyed me long ago, ere yet my lips
Did meditate this feeding's monstrous crime!

140. Taboos
Withhold your hands from leaves of Phoebus' tree !

141.
Ye wretched, O ye altogether wretched,
Your hands from beans withhold!

142. Sin
Neither roofed halls of aegis-holding Zeus
Delight it, nor dire Hecate's venging house.

143.
Scooping from fountains five with lasting bronze.

144.
O fast from evil-doing.

145.
Since wildered by your evil-doings huge,
Ne'er shall ye free your life from heavy pains.

146. The Progression of Rebirth
And seers at last, and singers of high hymns.
Physicians sage, and chiefs o'er earth-born men
Shall they become, whence germinate the gods,
The excellent in honors.

147.
At hearth and feast companioned with the immortals,
From human pains and wasting eld immune.