I, you it Phyllis, who welcomed you to Rhodope, Demophoon, complain that the promised day is past, and you not here. When once the horns of the moon should have come together in full orb, our shores were to expect your anchor—the moon has four times waned, and four times waxed again to her orb complete; yet the Sithonian wave brings not the ships of Acte. Should you count the days—which we count well who love—you will find my plaint come not before its time.
Hope, too, has been slow to leave me; we are tardy in believing, when belief brings hurt. Even now my love is loath to let me think you wrong me. Oft have I been false to myself in my defence of you; oft have I thought the gusty breezes of the south were bringing back your white sails. Theseus I have cursed, because methought he would not let you go; yet mayhap ’tis not he that has stayed your course. At times have I feared lest, while you were holding toward the waters of the Hebrus, your craft had been wrecked and engulfed in the foaming wave. Oft, bending the knee in prayer that you fare well—ah, wretched man!—have I venerated the gods with prayer or with burning of holy incense; oft, seeing in sky and on sea that the winds were favouring, have I said to myself: “If he do fare well, he is on the way.” In a word, all things soever that hinder those in haste to come, my faithful love has tried to image forth, and my wit has been fertile in the finding of causes. But you delay long your coming; neither do the gods by whom you swore bring you back to me, nor does love of mine move your return. Demophoon, to the winds you gave at once both promised word and sails; your sails, alas! have not returned, your promised word has not been kept.
Tell me, what have I done, except not wisely love?—and by the very fault I might well have won you for my own. The one crime which may be charged to me is that I took you, O faithless, to myself; but this crime has all the weight and seeming of good desert. The bonds that should hold you, the faith that you swore, where are they now?—and the pledge of the right hand you placed in mine, and the talk of God that was ever on your lying lips? Where now the bond of Hymen promised for years of life together—promise that was my warrant and surety for the wedded state? By the sea, all tossed by wind and wave, over which you had often gone, over which you were still to go; and by your grandsire—unless he, too, is but a fiction—by your grandsire, who calms the windwrought wave, you swore to me; yes, and by Venus and the weapons that wound me all too much—one weapon the bow, the other the torch; and by Juno, the kindly ward of the bridal bed; and by the mystical rites of the goddess who bears the torch. Should all the many gods you have wronged take vengeance for the outrage to their sacred names, your single life would not suffice.
Yes, and more, in my madness I even refitted your shattered ships—that the keel might be firm by which I was left behind!—and gave you the oars by which you were to fly from me. Ah me, my pangs are from wounds wrought by weapons of my own! I had faith in your wheedling words, and you had good store of them; I had faith in your lineage, and in the names it shows; I had faith in your tears—or can these also be taught to feign; and are these also guileful, and ready to How where bidden? I had faith, too, in the gods by whom you swore. To what end. pray, so many pledges of faith to me? By any part of them, however slight, I could have been ensnared.
I am stirred by no regret that I aided you with haven and abiding-place—only, this should have been the limit of my kindness! Shamefully to have added to my welcome of the guest the favours of the marriage-bed is what I repent me of—to have pressed your side to my own. The night before that night I could wish had been the last for me, while I still could have died Phyllis the chaste. I had hope for a better fate, for I thought it my desert; the hope—whatever it be—that is grounded in desert, is just.
To beguile a trustful maid is glory but cheaply earned; my simple faith was worthy of regard. I was deceived by your words—I, who loved and was a woman. May the gods grant that this be your crowning praise! In the midst of your city, even among the sons of Aegeus, go let yourself be statued, and let your mighty father be set there first, with record of his deeds. When men shall have read of Sciron, and of grim Procrustes, and of Sinis, and of the mingled form of bull and man, and of Thebes brought low in war, and of the rout of the two-framed Centaurs, and of the knocking at the gloomy palace of the darksome god—after all these, under your own image let be inscribed these words:
THIS IS HE WHOSE WILES BETRAYED THE HOSTESS THAT LOVED HIM.
Of all the great deeds in the long career of your sire, nothing has made impress upon your nature but the leaving of his Cretan bride. The only deed that draws forth his excuse, that only you admire in him; you act the heir to your father’s guile, perfidious one. She—and with no envy from me—enjoys now a better lord, and sits aloft behind her bridled tigers; but me, the Thracians whom I scorned will not now wed, for rumour declares I set a stranger before my countrymen. And someone says: “Let her now away to learned Athens; to rule in armour-bearing Thrace another shall be found. The event proves well the wisdom of her course.’’ Let him come to naught, I pray, who thinks the deed should be condemned from its result. Ah, but if our seas should foam beneath your oar, then should I be said to have counselled well for myself, then well for my countrymen; but I have neither counselled well, nor will my palace feel your presence more, nor will you bathe again your wearied limbs in the Bistonian wave!
Ever to my sight clings that vision of you as you went, what time your ships were riding the waters of my harbour, all ready to depart. You dared embrace me, and, with arms close round the neck of her who loved you, to join your lips to mine in long and lingering kisses, to mingle with my tears your own, to complain because the breeze was favouring to your sails, and. as you left my side, to Say for your last words: “Phyllis, remember well, expect your own Demophoon!”
And am I to expect, when you went forth with thought never to see me more? Am I to expect the sails denied return to my seas? And yet I do expect—ah, return only, though late, to her who loves you, and prove your promise false only for the time that you delay!
Why entreat, unhappy that I am? It may be you are already won by another bride, and feel for her the love that favoured me but ill; and since I have fallen from out your life, I feel you know Phyllis no more. Ah me! if you ask who I, Phyllis, am, and whence—I am she, Demophoon, who, when you had been driven far in wanderings on the sea, threw open to you the havens of Thrace and welcomed you as guest, you, whose estate my own raised up, to whom in your need I in my plenty gave many gifts, and would have given many still; I am she who rendered to you the broad, broad realms of Lycurgus, scarce meet to be ruled in a woman’s name, where stretches icy Rhodope to Haemus with its shades, and sacred Hebrus drives his headlong waters forth—to you, on whom mid omens all sinister my maiden innocence was first bestowed, and whose guileful hand ungirdled my chaste zone! Tisiphone was minister at that bridal, with shrieks, and the bird that shuns the light chanted her mournful note; Allecto was there, with little serpents coiled about her neck, and the lights that waved were torches of the tomb!
Heavy in soul, none the less do I tread the rocks and the thicket-covered strand, where’er the sea view opens broad before my eyes. Whether by day the soil is loosed by warmth, or whether constellations coldly shine, I look ever forth to see what wind doth sweep the straits; and whatever sails I see approaching from afar, straightway I augur them the answer to my prayers. I rush forth to the waters, scarce halted by the waves where first the sea sends in its mobile tide. The nearer the sails advance, the less and less the strength that bears me up; my senses leave me, and I fall, to be caught up by my handmaids’ arms.
There is a bay, whose bow-like lines are gently curved to sickle shape; its outmost horns rise rigid and in rock-bound mass. To throw myself hence into the waves beneath has been my mind; and, since you still pursue your faithless course, so shall it be. Let the waves bear me away, and cast me up on your shores, and let me meet your eyes untombed! Though in hardness you be more than steel, than adamant, than your very self, you shall say: “Not so, Phyllis, should I have been followed by thee!” Oft do I long for poison; oft with the sword would I gladly pierce my heart and pour forth my blood in death. My neck, too, because once offered to the embrace of your false arms, I could gladly ensnare in the noose. My heart is fixed to die before my time, and thus make amends to tender purity. In the choosing of my death there shall be but small delay.
On my tomb shall you be inscribed the hateful cause of my death. By this, or by some similar verse, shall you be known:
DEMOPHOON ’TWAS SENT PHYLLIS TO HER DOOM; HER GUEST WAS HE, SHE LOVED HIM WELL. HE WAS THE CAUSE THAT BROUGHT HER DEATH TO PASS; HER OWN THE HAND BY WHICH SHE FELL.
Cite This Text