THE shell assuaged his sorrow: thee he sang,
Sweet wife! thee with him on the shore alone,
At rising dawn, at parting day, sang thee.
The mouths of Tænarus, the gates of Dis,
Groves dark with dread, he entered; he approacht
The Manes and their awful king, and hearts
That knew not pity yet for human prayer.
Rous’d at his song, the shades of Erebus
Rose from their lowest, most remote abodes,
Faint shades, and empty semblances of life,
Numberless as from woodland wilds the birds
That wintery evening drives or mountain storm:
Mothers and husbands, unsubstantial crests
Of high-soul’d heroes, boys, unwedded maids,
And youths swept off before their parents’ eyes.
The deep black oose and rough unsightly reed
Of slow Cocytusis unyielding pool,
And Styx confines them, flowing ninefold round.
The halls and inmost Tartarus of Death,
And (the blue adders twisting in their hair)
The Furies were astounded.
On he stept,
And Cerberus held agape his triple jaws;
On stept the bard.. Ixion’s wheel stood still.
Now, past all peril, free was his return,
And now was hastening into upper air
Eurydice, when sudden madness siezed
The incautious lover; pardonable fault,
If they below could pardon: on the verge
Of light he stood, and on Eurydice
(Mindless of fate, alas! and soul-subdued)
Lookt back.
There, Orpheus! Orpheus! there was all
Thy labor shed, there burst the Dynast’s bond,
And thrice arose that rumor from the lake.
“Ah what!” she cried, “what madness hath undone
Me! and, ah wretched! thee, my Orpheus too!
For lo! the cruel Fates recall me now;
Chill slumbers press my swimming eyes.. Farewell!
Night rolls intense around me as I spread
My helpless arms.. thine, thine no more.. to thee.”
She spake, and, like a vapour, into air
Flew, nor beheld him as he claspt the void
And sought to speak; in vain; the ferry-guard
Now would not row him o’er the lake again,
His wife twice lost, what could he? whither go?
What chaunt, what wailing, move the Powers of Hell?
Cold in the Stygian bark and lone was she.
Beneath a rock o’er Strymon’s flood on high,
Seven months, seven long-continued months, ’tis said,
He breath’d his sorrows in a desert cave,
And sooth’d the tiger, moved the oak, with song.
So Philomela mid the poplar shade
Bemoans her captive brood: the cruel hind
Saw them unplumed and took them: but all night
Grieves she, and, sitting on the bough, runs o’er
Her wretched tale, and fills the woods with woe.