And in my ears seems a voice of lamentation from the tower tops reaching to the windless seats of air, with groaning of 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 waters 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 prowpeak 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 gloried 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
Ay! me, for thy 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 thy 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 ye cliffs, and 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 aching 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 his 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
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