"For soon as to the wearied Greeks it shall
Be given by Fate to storm Troy's god-built wall,
The lofty tomb shall in the blood be dyed
Of fair Polyxena, the unwedded bride,
Who prone to earth a headless trunk shall reel,
As falls the victim 'neath the two-edged steel.
Run, spindles, run, and weave the threads of doom!
"Wherefore away, and consummate the rite,
In which your souls are yearning to unite.
Take, groom, in wedlock blest the child of heaven,
To her long-longing lord the bride be given!
Run, spindles, run, and weave the threads of doom!
"Her nurse at morn shall find the thread too tight, Which more than spans her maiden throat to-night.
Run, spindles, run, and weave the threads of doom!
"Between these twain shall discord never be,
Nor ever shall her mother mourn to see
Her daughter sever'd from her husband's bed,
And all her hopes of children's children fled.
Run, spindles, run, and weave the threads of doom!"
In such prophetic strains the Fates foretold
High bliss to Peleus in the days of old.
For in that elder time, when truth and worth
Were still revered and cherished here on earth,
The tenants of the skies would oft descend
To heroes' spotless homes, as friend to friend,
There meet them face to face, and freely share
In all that stirr'd the hearts of mortals there.
Thus on his days of festal, year by year,
Would the great father of the gods appear,
And from the splendours of his stately fane
Behold a hundred chariots sweep the plain.
Oft from Parnassus' topmost ridges, too,
Would roving Bacchus lead his yelling crew
Of Thyads, with their locks all blown about,
When forth the Delphian throng with cry and shout
Rush'd from their town to greet him, and the smoke
Of altar-fires their gratitude bespoke.
Oft in the battle's foremost van was seen
Grim-fronted Mars, or rushing Triton's queen,
Or the Rhamnusian virgin, as to close
In deadly gripe they cheer'd the mailed foes.
But when the earth was steep'd in crime, and when
All justice fled the souls of selfish men;
When brothers dyed their hands in brothers' gore,
And children wept their parents dead no more;
When the sire yearn'd his first-born son to see
Stretch'd at his feet a lifeless corpse, that he
Might for the riot of his brutal bed
Secure the stepdame, widow'd yet unwed;
When, lost to all remorse, a mother vile,
Her household gods could impiously defile,
And yield herself, by no endearments won,
To the embrace of her unconscious son;
Then wrong and right, impiety and crime,
Confounded by the madness of the time,
Unto the just Immortals struck dismay,
And from the chaos drear they turn'd away.
Wherefore no more would they be seen of men,
Beneath the light of common day again.
ROM converse with the learned sisters torn
By grief, which cries for ever at my heart,
My mind, dear Hortalus, so faint and worn
With anguish is, that I have lost the art
The Muses' gentle promptings to impart ;
For Lethe's tide has recently roll'd o'er
My brother's pallid feet its waters swart,
Who, hurried from mine eyes for evermore,
Now sleeps in Trojan earth by the Rhætèan shore.
Oh, is thy voice for ever hush'd and still?
Oh, brother, dearer far than life, shall I
Behold thee never? But in sooth I will
For ever love thee, as in days gone by ;
And ever through my songs shall ring a cry
Sad with thy death, sad as in thickest shade
Of intertangled boughs the melody,
Which by the woful Daulian bird is made,
Sobbing for Itys dead her wail through all the glade.
Yet in the midst of all my griefs I send
These verses from Cyrene's poet ta'en,
Lest thou, belike, might'st deem, beloved friend,
That I thy bidding lightly did disdain,
Or but by chance remember it with pain;
As maiden coy, within whose bosom sleeps
Love's furtive gift, to greet her mother fain,
Springs up, when forth the tell-tale apple leaps,
And o'er her cheeks a blush of shame and anguish creeps.
[This is the poem referred to in the immediately preceding lines. The original by Callimachus is lost.]
who did with curious cunning trace
The lights that gleam through all the vast of space,
Number'd the constellations o'er, and knew
The rising of the stars, their setting too;
What veils the sun's resplendence in eclipse,
And why at stated times each planet dips
Beyond our ken; how love's delicious power
Drew Trivia down from her aerial bower
To Latmos' cave ;-he, Conon, sage divine,
Descried me, where afar in heaven I shine:
I'mongst the stars myself resplendent now,
I who once curl'd on Berenice's brow,
The tress which she, uplifting her fair arms,
To many a god devoted, so from harms
They might protect her new-found royal mate,
When from her bridal chamber all elate,
With its sweet triumphs flush'd, he went in haste
To lay the regions of Assyria waste.
Are the endearments of their plighted lord By new-made brides detested and abhorr'd?
Sincere the tears, which they profusely pour
Soon as they pass the nuptial chamber door,
To dash their parents' joys? No! False I swear
By all the gods, such tears and such despair!
This from my queen I learn'd, as many a day
And woful night she wore in grief away,
When her young spouse went forth to warfare's grim array.
Yet in thy solitude 'twas not alone
Thy lorn and widow'd couch thou didst bemoan,
But a dear brother's danger, borne afar
Into the carnage and the clang of war.
How wert thou rack'd with terror and with pain,
'Till reason totter'd in thy tortured brain!
Yet from thy tenderest maiden years had I
Thy spirit known magnanimous and high.
Didst thou that deed of noble note forget,
Which won for thee thy royal lord, and yet
Shines on the roll of fame pre-eminent?
But, oh! thy grief when forth thy husband went!
What words of anguish; mighty Jove, what sighs!
What tears by fingers wan dash'd from thine eyes
What mighty god so changed thee? Or was this,
Because to lovers fond long absence is
As dread as once divine their now remembered bliss?
Then, then it was for thy dear spouse that thou
Thy crispèd hairs to all the gods didst vow,
With blood of bulls, to speed him home, and bring
All Asia vassal bound to Egypt's king.
Thy prayers were heard; and 'mongst celestials now With lustre new I pay thy pristine vow; And yet reluctantly, oh queen most fair, I parted from thee!-by thyself, I swear,
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