With dancing and loud revelry, — and went
Swifter than centaurs after rapine bent.
Sighing, an elephant appeared and bowed.
Before the fierce witch, speaking thus aloud
In human accent: "Potent goddess! chief
Of pains resistless! make my being brief,
Or let me from this heavy prison fly:
Or give me to the air, or let me die!
I sue not for my happy crown again;
I sue not for my phalanx on the plain;
I sue not for my lone, my widowed wife;
I sue not for my ruddy drops of life,
My children fair, my lovely girls and boys!
I will forget them; I will pass these joys;
Ask naught so heavenward, so too-too high:
Only I pray, as fairest boon, to die,
Or be delivered from this cumbrous flesh,
From this gross, detestable, filthy mesh,
And merely given to the cold, bleak air.
Have mercy, goddess! Circe, feel my prayer!"
That curst magician's name fell icy numb Upon my wild conjecturing: truth had come Naked and saberlike against my heart.
I saw a fury whetting a death dart;
And my slain spirit, overwrought with fright, Fainted away in that dark lair of night. Think, my deliverer, how desolate
My waking must have been! disgust, and hate,
And terrors manifold divided me
A spoil amongst them. I prepared to flee
Into the dungeon core of that wild wood:
I fled three days - when lo! before me stood
Glaring the angry witch. O Dis, even now,
A clammy dew is bending on my brow,
At mere remembering her pale laugh, and curse.
"Ha! ha! Sir Dainty! there must be a nurse
Made of rose leaves and thistledown, express,
To cradle thee, my sweet, and lull thee: yes,
I am too flinty-hard for thy nice touch:
My tenderest squeeze is but a giant's clutch.
So, fairy thing, it shall have lullabies
Unheard of yet; and it shall still its cries
Upon some breast more lily feminine.
Oh, no-it shall not pine, and pine, and pine
More than one pretty, trifling thousand years;
And then 'twere pity, but fate's gentle shears
Cut short its immortality. Sea flirt!
Young dove of the waters! truly I'll not hurt
One hair of thine: see how I weep and sigh,
That our heart-broken parting is so nigh.
And must we part? Ah, yes, it must be so.
Yet, ere thou leavest me in utter woe,
Let me sob over thee my last adieus,
And speak a blessing. Mark me! Thou hast thews
Immortal, for thou art of heavenly race;
But such a love is mine, that here I chase
Eternally away from thee all bloom
Of youth, and destine thee towards a tomb.
Hence shalt thou quickly to the watery vast;
And there, ere many days be overpast,
Disabled age shall seize thee; and even then
Thou shalt not go the way of aged men;
But live and wither, cripple and still breathe
Ten hundred years; which gone, I then bequeath
Thy fragile bones to unknown burial.
Adieu, sweet love, adieu!"
She fled ere I could groan for mercy. Stung
And poisoned was my spirit: despair sung
A war song of defiance 'gainst all hell.
A hand was at my shoulder to compel
My sullen steps; another 'fore my eyes
Moved on with pointed finger. In this guise
Enforced, at the last by ocean's foam
I found me; by my fresh, my native home.
Its tempering coolness, to my life akin,
Came salutary as I waded in;
And, with a blind, voluptuous rage, I gave
Battle to the swollen billow ridge, and drave
Large froth before me, while there yet remained
Hale strength, nor from my bones all marrow drained.
Young lover, I must weep-such hellish spite With dry cheek who can tell? While thus my might Proving upon this element, dismayed,
Upon a dead thing's face my hand I laid;
I looked - 'twas Scylla! Cursed, cursed Circe!
O vulture witch, hast never heard of mercy?
Could not thy harshest vengeance be content,
But thou must nip this tender innocent
Because I loved her? - Cold, O cold indeed
Were her fair limbs, and like a common weed
The sea swell took her hair. Dead as she was
I clung about her waist, nor ceased to pass
Fleet as an arrow through unfathomed brine,
Until there shone a fabric crystalline,
Ribbed and inlaid with coral, pebble, and pearl.
Headlong I darted; at one eager swirl
Gained its bright portal, entered, and behold!
'Twas vast, and desolate, and icy cold;
And all around - But wherefore this to thee,
Who, in few minutes more, thyself shalt see?
I left poor Scylla in a niche and fled.
My fevered parchings up, my scathing dread
Met palsy halfway; soon these limbs became
Gaunt, withered, sapless, feeble, cramped, and lame.
[For biographical sketch, see Principles of Homeric Translation.]
Scene: The Portico of Circe's Palace. Evening. Present: A YOUTH, CIRCE.
The Youth Faster, faster,
O Circe, Goddess,
Let the wild, thronging train,
The bright procession
Of eddying forms,
Sweep through my soul!
Thou standest, smiling
Down on me! thy right arm,
Leaned up against the column there,
Props thy soft cheek;
Thy left holds, hanging loosely,
The deep cup, ivy-cinctured,
I held but now.
Is it then evening
So soon? I see, the night dews,
Clustered in thick beads, dim
The agate brooch stones
On thy white shoulder;
The cool night wind, too,
Blows through the portico,
Stirs thy hair, Goddess,
Waves thy white robe!
Whence art thou, sleeper?
The Youth - When the white dawn first
Through the rough fir planks
Of my hut, by the chestnuts,
Up at the valley head,
Came breaking, Goddess!
I sprang up, I threw round me
My dappled fawn skin;
Passing out, from the wet turf,
Where they lay, by the hut door,
I snatched up my vine crown, my fir staff,
All drenched in dew-
Came swift down to join
The rout early gathered
In the town, round the temple,
Iacchus' white fane
On yonder hill.
Through the delicate, flushed marble,
The red, creaming liquor,
Strown with dark seeds!
Drink, then! I chide thee not,
Deny thee not my bowl.
Come, stretch forth thy hand, then-so!
Drink drink again!
The Youth Thanks, gracious one!
Ah, the sweet fumes again!
More soft, ah me,
More subtle-winding
Than Pan's flute music!
Faint — faint! Ah me,
Again the sweet sleep!
Hist! Thou- within there!
Come forth, Ulysses!
Art tired with hunting?
While we range the woodland,
See what the day brings.
Ever new magic!
Hast thou then lured hither,
Wonderful Goddess, by thy art,
The young, languid-eyed Ampelus,
Iacchus' darling -
Or some youth beloved of Pan,
Of Pan and the Nymphs?
That he sits, bending downward
His white, delicate neck
To the ivy-wreathed marge
Of thy cup; the bright, glancing vine leaves
That crown his hair,
Falling forward, mingling
With the dark ivy plants
His fawn skin, half untied,
Smeared with red wine stains? Who is he,
That he sits, overweighed
By fumes of wine and sleep,
So late, in thy portico?
What youth, Goddess, what guest
Of Gods or mortals?
Hist! he wakes!
I lured him not hither, Ulysses.
Nay, ask him!
|