OEnone had been weeping, but her tears
The bitter blast had dried; for on the top
Of Ida stood she, on that pale short grass
Where the wind whirl’d the pine-cones, rolling them
Along their narrow and hard-pointed leaves.
Hence she beheld the temples and the town
Of Dardanos, now fated, and discern’d
The house of him she loved: then from the woods
She call’d out Corythos; and thus she spake.
“Go, my child, go. Within the walls of Troy
One is there who will love and cherish thee,
Thee, but without thy mother! Yes, there lives
Thy father.. but how short a time to live
Alas! he knows not: for from Lemnos comes
In safety Philoctetes, and he brings
Those arrows with him, those of Hercules,
By which the Fates have sung that he must fall.
Unwelcome thou wilt not be (for no son
Hath she) to Helen, if that head so dear
Thou rescuest from perdition: he himself
May not perhaps forget those days serene
That shone on him and me; may not forget
How once the poplar bore upon its bark
Two names united. If unmindful now,
Unmindful he will cease to be at sight
Of thee: if bad the husband, he will be
The better father for that very cause,
And own he owes his life to Corythos,
To thee, deserted Corythos! his son.”
Embracing him, she mingled with embrace
Kisses and tears; and then consign’d him, loth,
To an old guide. but often called him back,
Repeating the same orders; to avoid
The sail-white waters and the secret hays,
And every place where Grecian might abide.
They winde their way down the steep braky road.
Then, when their voices she could hear no more,
Nor see the birds their shouts and stones had scared,
Turn’d she her face, and this lone plaint began!
“Aërial mountains! woods, where Gods reside,
And Corythos was cradled! you I see,
But him I see no longer, to these eyes
Dearer than light! Before him Paris went
And never more return’d: no love remains
For me, no pledge of love! Not only lost
Are former joys, but lost is also he
Who brought them back to me, by step, by mien,
By play, by prattle, and could half-persuade
That nothing was amiss or ought to grieve me.
Him too I now am parted from, and yield
Almost without reluctance, tho’ the sole
Calmer and comforter of every pang,
That happier days he his than have been mine.
Yet all things (how can I believe my eyes?)
Appear the same as ever: Xanthos flows,
And Simois, in the morning light as clear,
And Tenedos seems only one vast rook
Upon the whitening reflux of the waves.
In form too and in features I myself
Remain the same; for age can not consume
Nor change them. Ah, sad thought! how fugitive
The gifts I catch at! Like the snow beneath
A southern wind, thy form, OEnone, wanes
And wastes, unhappy! in the sight of him
Thou holdest ever lovely, ever dear.
“How easy it is to mow down the bloom
Of life, and sow the open breast with cares!
How soon, when faith is shaken, youth is shed!
Irrevocable days bear heavily
Upon the sinking heart, but heavier far
The future anguish of the fondly loved.
“Asterope! my sister! happy thou
In thy espousals! Can then OEsacos
Be kin to Paris? brother? But the one
The mild Arisbe bore, the other sprang
From Hecuba, a violent River’s child.
I envy not the happy ones alone,
But even the wretched who have left the light
Of upper air; the maiden whose stern sire
Hath turn’d the torch of Hymen from her path,
And widow on whose bridal bed there hung
The withering garlands. Grief that death has brought
Time in the course of nature bears away.
“Where Nile throws open his wide chamber, strewn
With lotus; where, to sight insuperable,
The holy Ganges rolls his stream from high,
If Memnon’s mother rise before the sun
To weep for him; if ye too, O ye Nymphs
Of ocean! have beheld how great the grief
Of Thetis; how, when Glaucos would advise,
She fled from comfort, fled from Triton’s song
And Doris and her daughters who sate round;
If by the walls of Neptune all the maids
And matrons wail’d at Hector’s late-rais’d bier,
Stil Hector’s was Andromache, as when
Their child was frightened at his nodding crest
And heroes fled before him: his was she
In death, nor severed from him by the tomb.
Deserves OEnone then a harder fate?
“What is my fault? unless a fault it be
To sit secluded at the dens of beasts,
Where bear and wolf break slumbers just begun,
And where the mighty mother of the Gods
Drags the reluctant lions to her wheels;
Unless it be a fault to have remain’d
So faithful to the faithless, nor have breath’d
Complaint to other than the passing wind.
There are kind Gods who may deem otherwise.
Howe’er that happen, brighter be the days
Of Corythos, and nobler his pursuits
Than creeping to draw meshes round the nides
Of birds now mute, and gather’d close in fields
White with the steril stubble or hard snow.
Happier be thou, my child! if Gods look down
On pious prayers, and children are exempt
From retribution for parental guilt.”
Meanwhile the youth was looking up the walls
And wondering at their highth, and how they stood
Defiant of so long and fierce a war.
“But where is that old fig-tree? where the spot
Whence Hector, my brave uncle, met in fight
Achilles? where did Venus cast the cloud
Around my father?”
And he siez’d the hand
Of his old guide each time he askt and heard.
Ascending up to Pergama, before
The gate an elder of the town he sees,
And asks him whereabout stands Priam’s house.
His guide represses him, and says,
“We go
To Helen.”
“Go then,” cried the aged man,
“Readily may that fatal pest be found,
And none is wanted here to show the way.”
Around his neck sprang the Idæan boy
And “Blessed!” cried he, “blessed be whoe’er
Thus deeply hates my mother’s injurer.
With me most virtuous is it to abhor
That Spartan. To none other house go I,
Than the king’s own, where with his father dwells
My father; where the chaste Andromache
Bemoans her husband on the ground he trod;
Where now a wanton one, who fears not Fan
Nor Jove himself, with nimble needle paints
For altars, none of theirs, fine tapestry,
Or plucks the harpstrings with a Sphynxis nail.”
Many had seen and past them as they spake;
One, ’twas a female, hesitated, stopt,
And askt them if from Ida they had seen
The Grecian ships departing? were the winds
So fair? and, while the elder she addrest,
She gazed upon the younger. He was toucht
To see her cheek grow pale and red by turns;
Nor quite unmoved the elder: to himself
Said he “When beauty such as this shines forth
From Ilion, who would ever lend his ear
Even when a Goddess may have promist more?”
Now saw the youth, who saw them not til now,
Maidens behind her, beauteous, with succinct
Vesture and braided hair; graceful their form,
And modest their demeanour: not so quick
Bounded his bosom when the boar rusht out
Against the meshes, when the cornel spear
Hist on the bristles of his vaulted back,
The curv’d tusk gnasht, and the black blood boil’d o’er.
Whither they bent their way she now inquired.
The elder answered her.
“We bend our way
Where dwelt Assaracos, and Paris dwells.”
Then she.
“The road is safer if I guide,
And you will easier see whom you require,
Soon coming homeward from the citadel:
For clamour there was heard at early dawn
Along the coast, and then a boat appear’d,
And an old man stept out. Ulysses met
This stranger. Now, throughout the orchards, crofts,
And little gardens next the sandy beach,
The sailors gathered vervain, gathered bay,
And with fresh garlands every prow was trim’d.
Our leaders think this surely must denote
Good Fortune, favorable oracles;
And grant, ye Gods! the anchors heave at last.”
The old Idæan shook his head, and spake.
“He who arrives is one they left behind,
Is Philoctetes; and the arms he bears
Were once the arms of Hercules: the bow
Of Nessos, and the arrows dipt in blood
Of Hydra, come to light the pyre of Troy.”
Struck by his speech, the more she wisht to ask
The quicker stept she, and the more she urged
The maidens to step on: she flew, but lookt
On Corythos in flying.
Just below
The citadel a gorgeous palace stood;
She enter’d, followed by the trembling maids;
The Idæans followed slower.
As they pass
The house of Hector, they observe young girls,
Too young for foresight, thence less wretched yet,
And matrons calm, and widows unconsoled,
Bring honey to his Manes: and with these
They mourn, and shudder at the silent hall;
Chilly and lying waste with Hector’s death.
At last to Parisis abode they come.
Bidden to enter here, the spacious courts,
The lofty columns, the resplendent gods
Of brass and marble, the smooth steps and wide,
And the vast portals and resounding valves,
Strike them with admiration and with awe.
How many ivory statues breathe around!
How many golden! nor do fewer move
In the warm colours emulous of life.
To the Dictæan king had Dædalos
Given a part of these; his daughter gave
The same to Theseus; Theseus gave the same
To Helen, when he hoped to bear her off
To pleasant Athens from her mother’s side.
And she afforded no few scenes for art,
No few her mother. Here first recognized
The Idæans Helen. She in every game
Stood forth the fairest with her locks of gold,
While all the potent of the sea and sky
Gazed with proud smile benevolent; but Jove
Above them all: complacently he watcht
His progeny by water and by land
Whatever she was doing. Venus came
Close after her, while upon high the swans
Archt their proud necks. Another time (so great
The skill which Venus only could inspire)
You would have thought them circling round and round.
There is a record in the courts of heaven,
Sometimes brought out and whispered on, that once
Among the reeds and cane-beds Jove assumed
The figure of a swan, and thus beguiled
Her mother Leda; while the river swans,
To kindred strangers evermore averse,
Sate silent, and lookt all another way,
So fear’d they that surpassing one, and drave
The swimmer boys afar with threatening beaks
And swinging circuit of expanded vans.
Therefor ’twas his decree that none beside
Should draw her chariot on high days, when moved
By gift of hero or by prayer of God.
Tyndaris now told Paris all she knew
From the old shepherd, save what mother bore
The youth, and whose his beauteous face was like.
Such once was Alexander, then the guest
Of Sparta: but not yet ten years of war
Had he encountered, not yet fled the sword
Of Diomed, inglorious and disgraced..
He now sate smiling at the tremulous tones
Of Helen; and then smooth’d her troubled brow,
Touching and kissing it: at last more grave
These words he uttered, and assumed his seat.
“That Philoetetes in a far-off ile
Rests at this moment on a fallen beech
His heavy wound: a bird’s wing drives away
The bite of beast and insect. When he feels
Eagle’s or vulture’s shadow over him,
He tries in vain to lift his weary lids
And cry so weak it drops into his breast.
He who thus suffers from a faithless friend,
Left on the shore to hunger and to thirst,
And hear the oars sound less and less distinct
At every stroke, and songs as they depart
Float on the summer air, so joyously
To them, to him so sadly, first and last,
Deploring that immedicable wound.
Arrow hath he dipt in Lernæan blood?
But grant he land upon that very coast,
What ills, what dangers, menace us? he sees
That chariot broken which drag’d Hector, sees
The tomb of Ajax, and may know again
The arms that Thetis vainly brought her son.
And this, Neptunian Troy! the man is this
Who comes against thee now and works thy fall;
Tis time to turn our backs, to leave our homes,
Unshaken wall, unviolated fane,
Rais’d by Minerva, citadel which she
And Venus with her equally protects,
And over which (to Agamemnon’s house
For ever hostile) in the light of day
Apollo hath been seen and hath been heard
Exhorting us, and scaring back the foe.
Ulysses, that great queller of our hosts,
Brings Philoctetes now! now let us fly
Even to Mycenai: let us carry now
Within our quailing bosoms all those Gods
(Among the rest Palladium) who have stood
Stabile and strong against all former wars,
And to Diana let us sacrifice
Upon the summit of Taïgetos.
The rampire of the Achaians, true enough,
Is mingled with the yellow sea-shore sand,
Scattered the Myrmidons, the Dorian camp
Wide open: that is little: but behold
How fulminates against our feebleness
The stout successor of Achilles slain!
When their own walls were standing round the Greeks,
When Juno exercised her vengeful sway
And arm’d the fist of Diomed, when safe
Behind his seven-fold shield their Ajax stood,
And the proud man of Nereid mother sprung
Loosen’d with blood the Ætionæan towers,
Such idle terrors with indignant soul
I would spurn from me. Are no gifts of heaven
Vouchsafed to me? no Venus marks me out?
And no Apollo breathes into my breast?”
His boasts encouraged her, his scornful smile
Arous’d her and refresht.
Some days had past,
And Corythos grew willing to believe
His step-dame was kind-hearted. Not alone
Her countenance, be bland and beautiful,
Rais’d her beyond all mortals: he admired
One who could place herself amid the low,
Could smile with them and weep with them, and view
On the same level all, herself above
All things the world’s eternal walls contain.
Nor wonderful nor great could aught appear
To one so far supreme, nor would she turn
Her face from Irus at the feasts of Jove.
Corythos now she knew: he did not wish
Concealment of his origin, nor might
Such wish avail him when she saw him more.
The causes of his coming she inquired,
And gave him courage as she gave her hand.
At first he was ashamed he could not hate
His step-dame; now, that he had ever tried.
He hangs upon her words; what words! how sweet
In utterance! from what high serenity
Of brow descending on his softened heart!
“Ever too bold the brave and beautiful!”
Sighed she, “but even the stoutest well may start
At the close graves along the uneven sands,
The scattered bones whitening beneath their pyres
Where sharp winds flake them, and doom’d cypresses
That darken Ida’s brow, to burn on more.
Surely ’tis sad enough were only joys
And pleasures tome away, without the tomb
With its cold shadows filling up their place.”
Kind words she spake, and kinder deeds prepared,
But doubted when, how, where, she might surprise
Her Paris with his semblance in his child.
Rarely hath any beauteous mother borne
Progeny like herself: the gods who once
Have listened to the prayer, look seldom down
A second time upon their supplicant.
She thought of this; she thought of one so young
As not to know her mother’s flight; and thick
Came forth her groans; unconsciously the name
Of her first husband followed them.
“Ah why
Hath never messager rejoiced my ear
Telling me what thou art, Hermione!
And how thy little playmate hath grown up,
Orestes.”
Seeking how she might retain
The unsteddy love of Paris, oft she wisht
A son were hers like Corythos, resolved
To make him hers by gentle offices
And (if there be atonement) to atone
For what his mother suffered by her fault.
“O Agelâos!” she exclaimed, “thy cares
Have rear’d both sire and son: the fatal torch
Extinguisht thou hast seen, and now wouldst see
Him who was fancied to have brought it home,
Yet who, in Ilion saved, himself is safe.
But haste not, let his son repeat to him
His mother’s words and have the first embrace.”
“No counsel else” replied the aged man
“Did Cebren’s daughter give me: but altho’
I may retrace the features so beloved
In childhood, ill may Paris recognise
Old Agelaos, in his wrinkled cheeks,
Grey temples, and that slow and spiritless
Movement where years are crowded upon years.
Perhaps he may not wish to see again
The once familiar who hath followed up
A better course than he: the royal heir
May need me not, yet Corythos stil needs
My help.. to fail him but in death alone.”
Various the thoughts of Helen: she resolved
At last that Corythos should meet his sire
When Bacchus has thrown open the warm breast,
And when the harp is ringing, and the room
Round the high lamp is bright and jubilant.
Often she schem’d this interview: at length
The day is come.
The Trojans sing again
Gay songs, long intermitted, half-afraid
Lest skilful Paris gently reprehend
Words ill-remember’d, notes irregular;
The times had deaden’d so the unworthy strings.
Now censers burning all around reflect
The images that hold them, images
Of youths whose left-hand holds long garments back;
Scarlet and purple tapestry glows above
As if the sun had lighted it, and higher
Redden more dim the cedar’s vaulted beams,
Thro’ whose compartments had mimetic art
Displaid the deep clear azure, with its stars,
Where dwell in still serenity the Blest.
Along the hearth shoots forth a lambent flame;
The house-hold Gods smile with it, Paris smiles,
And she, the heaven-descended, whom he loves.
The hearts of both with placid course and full
Joy overflows and every hour expands:
Hour more propitious than the present none
Could meet her wishes. Slight inquietude
There is in his delay. Sometimes she breaks
The thread of her discourse to list awhile,
Then takes it up uneven, then replies
Wide of the question she hath seem’d to hear.
Silence! here enters Corythos! He starts
At the broad splendour; at the regal form
Of Paris now before him: to approach
His mighty sire he burns, but then draws back
His foot, and looks at Helen. This the prince
Observing. this. the bashfulness of youth..
The step so suddenly withdrawn. the breast
Heaving. the brow disturb’d. the voice extinct..
No colour in the cheek.. no name announced..
No office. but from graceful shoulders flowing
The very vest which Helen once had spun
For young Atrides, waiting his return,
In earlier days, when him alone she loved..
These things together strike him with the force
Of thunderbolt: up springs he: on that vest
He siezes; casts it from him; with his sword
Smites the boy s neck, his face, his side; spurns off
His hands to heaven appealing, and hears nought
But, struggling hard with blood, his dying groan.
Such the last day of Corythos! the last
Of peace to Paris and that gentlest dame
Of stepdames. When she saw the youth sink down
And all the furies urging Paris on,
Her senses left her: on the ivory couch
Cold lay her limbs as though she lay in death.
Her husband’s wrath heard not the groan profound
When his child roll’d before him and his eyes
Lookt up to him once more, swam, sank, and closed.
He bursts away and calls upon the Gods
Who punish perjuries; as if no God
Had noticed his; as if ‘twere very hard
Deceiver should be in his turn deceived.
When Agelaos heard the sad report,
Vengeance he called on Helen, vengeance call’d
On Paris: ashes o’er his head he heapt,
And, praying death may intercept him, bent
His homeward way. What should he there relate
Whose thanks bring back? a parent’s? overjoyed
To find a son beyond all hope, a son
Long absent, latest, dearest, gift of her
He had deserted! who, of him deprived,
Would miss his voice and face, all day, all night,
Sole solace of those long and weary hours,
But who, to turn aside the death she fear’d
For that most cruel father, hade the boy
Go seek him.. seek him in the stranger’s house,
The base adulteress who had wrought her woe.
Grief, anger, virtue, shake his breast at once;
Fain would he fly from Ida.
When the sire
Knew the sad truth, upon his son’s cold cheek
A thousand kisses did his lips impress;
He expiated (if grief could expiate)
His crime with bitter grief, and built up high
A pile of cypress to receive the corse;
And thus the lately found, by name (before
Unknown) in broken accents he bewail’d.
“Wept on no humble or unhonored bier,
Rest, O my Corythos, that placid rest
Which life denied thee!”
Scarce hath he invoked
The shade by name before he separates
The ashes of the boughs and of the boy,
And these he places in a golden urn
Nigh his own chamber. Dark is all the house,
And silent all within it. He hath lost,
Utterly lost, his grace in Helen’s eyes,
And thro’ his tears and anguish none sees he
In Leda’s daughter: both retort complaints,
And each-one’s sorrow is the other’s fault.
Again, he rushes forth on the remains
Of the Achaians; his high crest again
Is seen above the combat, and that shield
He shakes which Thetis by her prayers obtain’d
Of the fire-potent God, wherewith she arm’d
To conquer Asia her disdainful son,
And from that conqueror Paris tore away.
Weary of glory, worne with grief, he sought
The place where recently he fill’d the urn
With bones, of grace and beauty now disrobed
And brittle to embraces, losing form
And substance (what small remnant they retain’d)
When the first tear fell and sank into them.
In the still sacredness of night, alone
Went he, the stars were shining on the tomb,
And timidly and slowly he explored
With outspred hand if aught might yet remain
Of his lost child, and credulously seiz’d
Little black sticks, and bore them in his breast.
Greeks, as they roam’d along the shore, observ’d
His wanderings: these Ulysses had espied,
Epëus too, and, heavy with his wound
And catching the cool air with frequent gasp,
Pœantius. Round a high-piled tomb a trench
Was hollowed: hitherward they steal along
From the Sigæan sands, while yet the stars
Cast a scant light, and thro’ the uneven ground
And the dim copses winde their secret way.
And here await they Paris, true at last,
And smiting in the anguish of his soul
A breast too long from pious love estranged.
What bowstring, from what archer’s bow unstrung,
Rattles on belt or quiver? Who cries out?
None other voice responding. Hark! he groans;
He calls for enemy; no aid he claims
Of friend; but leaning on one elbow sits
Raging; and often strikes his heel the ground.
Swift steps run back along the soft sea-shore:
For they who smote him in the shade of night,
By the command and with the auspices
Of Gods, had stolen on a man unarm’d
Without their helmets, cuirases, or shields.
He could not follow, for behind his knee
The arrow had gone thro’: with desperate twist
He tore it out, and from two apertures
The hissing blood sprang forth: he sinks; he rolls
His limbs, he rolls his heavy eyes, all night,
In the red dew: he sees the city lamps
Kindled; he sees them all go out again
From the same spot. But when an iron light
Begins to peer o’er the cold plain, and wakes
From their brief sleep the tamer animals,
They of the household rise, and all around
In grove, in champain, seek their absent lord,
And, as if there the search should be the last,
At his son’s tomb. The race that cheers the ear
Of Morning with its voice, and penetrates
With its bold breast the woodland stiff with frost,
And, watchful at the gate in life’s extreme,
Is faithful to the wretched and the poor,
With eyes as languid on his languid eyes
Looks sorrowing down, and licks them unreproved.
When the last hour gleams feebly upon man
Not feebly rise the former: swift and thick
Do they crowd back with all the images
Of his misdeeds in clearest light reveal’d.
Now manifest is every oracle,
Now Lacedæmon’s awful Nemesis,
Now the red torch, now the right-hand that shakes
Its widening vapour over myriad graves,
To settle on the towers of llion.
But these all vanish. Thee alone he sees,
Daughter of Cebren! thee, beneath that rock
Where strowed the winds thy nuptial couch with leaves,
Espous’d, deserted, childless! What avail,
Ah what I the promises, the gifts, of Gods?
A better, now he feels, was left in thee.
“Go, ye who once could serve me, go” said he
“And tell Œnone ye have seen me pierced:
Tell her it is not help I now beseech,
But pardon.”
When the youths descried her home
Amid the innermost and highest wood,
And found it closed, and heard the wail within,
And saw tame stags raise up their antler’d heads
Suddenly from the threshold, they prepared
To enter.
They repeat the last command
Of him who sent them. Young, and confident
In ready eloquence, they would adorn
The wings of Mercury with brighter plumes,
And utter as their lord’s what time and place
Forbade his uttering, and (more strongly) grief.
His former love do they commemorate,
And how OEnone was endowed with herbs
Potent to save. She lookt aside, and said
“I could not save my son! nor did he ask
Who asks me now.” And, as she turn’d away,
They heard the halls with sob and plaint resound.
Meanwhile four stout attendants bear the prince
Upon a plank of pliant ash, where rose
The sacred mansion of the Idæan Nymph.
And as they bear him thither, toiling up
The narrow path, often the loose round stones
Slip under them and shake him, often spring
The branches back and strike against his wound.
Not long was the delay, but long it seem’d
To him whose day was closing, and before
He could collect the features in his mind
Of her he sought so eagerly. They pass
Along the crevices of rocks where hang
The ivy-stems their rigid moss.. of rocks
Which the spear’s point, in time gone-by, engraved
With tender verses round about linkt names;
Labour of idle hunter, disinclined
To let that idleness pass soon away.
And into opener places they procédé,
For feats remember’d of prevailing strength,
And songs and dances and successful loves.
There Paris paus’d and wept, with both his hands
Closed o’er the face: the four who carried him
Placed on the evenest ground the future bier,
And they too, turning back their faces, wept.
The Nymph of Ida came not forth to them,
But on the threshold of the open door
She staid her footstep, that the tears might flow
Within the house unseen one moment more.
And now the son of Priam views again
His early realm, a realm so peaceable,
And sweet OEnone, then his only care;
And now again, again, he hears the sighs
Which heave that faithful bosom: how diverse
From those he sigh’d to in the grot below!
And slowly lifting to that face divine
His eyes, “How many and what years” he cried,
“Since Paris saw OEnone his beloved!”
Nothing of anger or complaint said she;
For she had prayed of the Eumenides,
Few hours before, that the untimely end
Of Corythos their wrath should vindicate,
And that she might not, even if she will’d,
Be help to Paris in his hour of need.
Another prayer she added to these prayers,
With quivering lips, more anxiously, but fear’d
No God would grant it.
“Jupiter!” she cried,
“And if there he another who should hear
My last appeal.. grant me the gift of death.”
Thunder was heard upon the left, and signs
Shone forth above her from the sky serene.
But when she saw that son and sire had fared
Alike, and that she might have saved the one,
She who alone could save him, she appeared
Cruel and merciless.. to him.. to both.
“No; I deserve not, seek not, to prolong
My life,” said Paris. “Only let one urn
Unite us.. me, my Corythos!” He spake
And held the urn toward her: this she caught,
Together with the faint and chilly hand
It had nigh dropt from.
Paris had but strength
To add these words,
“OEnone! it was ours
To live united: they.. the Gods alone..
Sundered us.”
“But they sunder us no more.”
Said she. “Behold! the bridal hour is come,
Wherein no wretchedness, no falsehood is,
No separation. Ah! restrain, restrain
Those groans! Let me, my husband, die the first!
Hear me.. the Gods have heard me.. unwithhel’d,
Give one embrace.
“Paris is now my own,
Mine, by sure auspices, eternally.
And do not thou in Pluto’s house, my child,
Disdain the mother whom thy death brings down.
“Often the cruel gift that Venus gave
Gave me one comfort with it.. that my grief
Could not encrease; and now I lose this one.
From Juno less had been the penalty,
Wroth as she was, than Venus now exacts
In the same Ida.. Venus, crown’d by thee!”
Her fainting form the sister Nymphs receive,
And from its fountain bring the tepid stream;
In vain; then hasten to the mountain-top;
And there her father Cebren takes the urn,
To hold fresh ashes gathered by his hand.