But you will say, Phoibos has a goldgleaming diadem. Cadmos is gold in all his body! If you like, take all my serfs innumerable—for him, I will put in your hands all my gold and silver, I will give royal robes of the Tyrian Sea, and the house of my fathers, if you like ; accept, if I dare to say it, my father and mother too, accept all my waiting-women, and give me only this man for my bedfellow !
“Maiden, why do you tremble? You will” sail the seas in the spring-time across the narrow water—but with lovely Cadmos will traverse the infinite Ocean stream in winter! Tremble not at the heavyrumbling briny swell, because love’s cargo will be kept safe on the brine by Aphrodite daughter of the brine. Maiden, you have Cadmos, seek not the throne of Olympos! I desire not the shining Erythraian stone of the Indies, nor the all-golden tree of the Hesperides, delight not in the amber of the Heliades, so much as one shadowy night in which this vagrant shall hold Peisinoe in his arms, If you fetch your lineage from Ares, from Aphrodite, your provident mother has found you a marriage well worthy of theirs. I have never beheld such a flower ; spring itself blooms in Cadmos by nature’s gift. I have seen his rose-finger hand, I have seen his glance distilling sweet honey ; the cheeks of his love-begetting face are red as roses; his feet go twinkling, ruddy-brown in the middle, and changing colour at the ends into shining snow; his arms are lily-white. I will pass the hair, or I may provoke Phoibos by blaming the hue of his Therapnaian iris. Whenever he moved his full eyes with their heart-gladdening glance, there was the full moon shining with sparkling light ; when he shook his hair and bared his neck, there appeared the morning star! I would not speak of his lips ; but Persuasion dwells in his mouth, the ferry of the Loves, and pours out honey-sweet speech. Aye, the Graces manage his whole body : hands and fingers I shrink to judge, or I may find fault with the whiteness of milk.
Accept me for your companion, unhappy me but if I touch the boy’s right hand and stroke his “tunic I may find comfortable physic for my secret sickness. I may see his neck bare, or press a finger as if unconsciously while he sits ; I could gladly die, if he would only slip a willing hand into the orb of my bosom and press my two breasts, and hold his closed lips upon my lips to delight me with brushing kisses. But if I could still hold the boy in my arms, “I will pass even to Acheron the River of Pain of my own free will, and with rapture even amid the many lamentations of all-forgetting Lethe, I will tell the dead of my fate, to awaken pity and envy alike in merciless Persephoneia ; I will teach those grace-breathing kisses to women unhappy in love who died “of that lovely fire, I will make the dead jealous, if women still grudge at the Paphian in Lethe after their doom.
I will go with you if you wish, even as your companion, I tremble not before unfamiliar wander. Hard-hearted girl, become the lawful wife to Cadmos ; I would be chambermaid to you both, Harmonia and husband. —But again I tremble before you, lest some time awaken a and jealousy for your bed the’ you fain would hide it, since even Hera, goddess though she is and queen of the heavens, grudges Zeus his bastard wives on earth. She was angry with Europa and tormented the wandering; she spared not even goddesses; because his mother was angry, Ares persecuted Leto with child in her birth-pangs. If you are not jealous to find me a physic for my desire, give me this bedfellow for one dawn, yes I beseech you, for the course of one night too; if you grudge it, kill me with your own hand, that I may know rest from carrying this always night and day, fed on the secret places of my heart, this mighty implacable fire !
She said her say, and with her girdle drove bed-shy Harmonia to her voyage, stung as with a “gadfly and now obedient to desire. She changed her mind, and with divided purpose wished both to have the stranger and to live in her own land. So smitten to the heart with the sting, she spoke :
Ah me, who has changed my heart? Save you, my country! Farewell, Emathion and all my house! Farewell grottoes of the Cabeiroi and Corybantian cliffs ; never again shall I see the revelling companies of my mother’s Hecate with their torches in the night. Farewell, maidenhood, wed my sweet Cadmos Artemis, be not shocked, I am to cross the swell of the blue brine. But you will say, the deep is pitiless ; I care nothing for the maddened surges —let Harmonia and Cadmos drown together, and my mother’s sea may receive us both, follow my boy, calling upon the goddesses who have wedded theirs If my bedfellow carries me to the sunrise this voyage, I will proclaim how Orion loved Dawn, and will recall the match of Cephalos; if I go to the misty sunset, my comfort is Selene herself who felt the same for Endymion upon Latmos,”
Such words the girl uttered in mind-wandering plaints, and could not be restrained, her mind ravaged with the sting of desire. With drops of grief her face was wet as she kissed Electra’s hand and eyes, her feet and head and breast, and Emathion’s eyes, with shamefast lips although he was her brother. She embraced all her handmaids, and caressed lamenting the rows of the lifeless carven doors all round, her bed and the walls of her maiden chamber. Last the girl took up and kissed the dust on of her country’s soil.
Cite This Text