He spoke — his words heaven gave not to the winds.
They, the two first-born, disarrayed and piled
Their arms, while Lynceus stept into the ring,
And at his shield’s rim shook his stalwart spear.
And Castor likewise poised his quivering lance;
High waved the plume on either warrior’s helm.
First each at other thrust with busy spear
Where’er he spied an inch of flesh exposed:
But lo! both spearpoints in their wicker shields
Lodged ere a blow was struck, and snapt in twain.
Then they unsheathed their swords, and framed new modes
Of slaughter: pause or respite there was none.
Oft Castor on broad shield and plumèd helm
Lit, and oft keen-eyed Lynceus pierced his shield,
Or grazed his crest of crimson. But anon,
As Lynceus aimed his blade at Castor’s knee,
Back with the left sprang Castor and struck off
His fingers: from the maimed limb dropped the sword.
And, flying straightway, for his father’s tomb
He made, where gallant Idas sat and saw
The battle of the brethren. But the child
Of Zeus rushed in, and with his broadsword drave
Through flank and navel, sundering with swift stroke
His vitals: Lynceus tottered and he fell,
And o’er his eyelids rushed the dreamless sleep.
Nor did their mother see her elder son
Come a fair bridegroom to his Cretan home.
For Idas wrenched from off the dead man’s tomb
A jutting slab, to hurl it at the man
Who had slain his brother. Then did Zeus bring aid,
And struck the marble fabric from his grasp,
And with red lightning burned his frame to dust.
So doth he fight with odds who dares provoke
The Tyndarids, mighty sons of mighty sire.
Now farewell, Leda’s children: prosper aye
The songs I sing. What minstrel loves not well
The Tyndarids, and Helen, and the chiefs
That trod Troy down for Meneläus’ sake?
The bard of Chios wrought your royal deeds
Into his lays, who sang of Priam’s state,
And fights ‘neath Ilion’s walls; of sailor Greeks,
And of Achilles towering in the strife.
Yet take from me whate’er of clear sweet song
The Muse accords me, even all my store!
The gods’ most precious gift is minstrelsy.
IDYLL XXIII. Love Avenged
A lad deep-dipt in passion pined for one
Whose mood was froward as her face was fair.
Lovers she loathed, for tenderness she had none:
Ne’er knew what Love was like, nor how he bare
A bow, and arrows to make young maids smart:
Proof to all speech, all access, seemed her heart.
So he found naught his furnace to allay;
No quiver of lips, no lighting of kind eyes,
Nor rose-flushed cheek; no talk, no lover’s play
Was deigned him: but as forest-beasts are shy
Of hound and hunter, with this wight dealt she;
Fierce was her lip, her eyes gleamed ominously.
Her tyrant’s-heart was imaged in her face,
That flushed, then altering put on blank disdain.
Yet, even then, her anger had its grace,
And made her lover fall in love again.
At last, unable to endure his flame,
To the fell threshold all in tears he came:
Kissed it, and lifted up his voice and said:
“O heart of stone, O curst and cruel maid
Unworthy of all love, by lions bred,
See, my last offering at thy feet is laid,
The halter that shall hang me! So no more
For my sake, lady, need thy heart be sore.
Whither thou doom’st me, thither must I fare.
There is a path, that whoso treads hath ease
(Men say) from love; Forgetfulness is there.
But if I drain that chalice to the lees,
I may not quench the love I have for you;
Now at your gates I cast my long adieu.
Your future I foresee. The rose is gay,
And passing-sweet the violet of the spring:
Yet time despoils them, and they soon decay.
The lily droops and dies, that lustrous thing;
The solid-seeming snowdrift melts full fast;
And maiden’s bloom is rare, but may not last.
The time shall come, when you shall feel as I;
But, maiden, grant one farewell courtesy.
When you come forth, and see me hanging here,
E’en at your door, forget not my hard case;
But pause and weep me for a moment’s space.
And drop one tear, and cut me down, and spread
O’er me some garment, for a funeral pall,
That wrapped thy limbs: and kiss me — let the dead
Be privileged thus highly — last of all.
You need not fear me: not if your disdain
Changed into fondness could I live again.
And scoop a grave, to hide my loves and me:
And thrice, at parting, say, ‘My friend’s no more:’
Add if you list, ‘a faithful friend was he;’
And write this epitaph, scratched upon your door:
Stranger, Love slew him. Pass not by, until
Thou hast paused and said, ‘His mistress used him ill.’”
This said, he grasped a stone: that ghastly stone
At the mid threshold ‘neath the wall he laid,
And o’er the beam the light cord soon was thrown,
And his neck noosed. In air the body swayed,
Its footstool spurned away. Forth came once more
The maid, and saw him hanging at her door.
No struggle of heart it cost her, ne’er a tear
She wept o’er that young life, nor shunned to soil,
By contact with the corpse, her woman’s-gear.
But on she went to watch the athletes’ toil,
Then made for her loved haunt, the riverside:
And there she met the god she had defied.
For on a marble pedestal Eros stood
Fronting the pool: the statue leaped, and smote
And slew that miscreant. All the stream ran blood;
And to the top a girl’s cry seemed to float.
Rejoice, O lovers, since the scorner fell;
And, maids, be kind; for Love deals justice well.
IDYLL XXIV. The Infant Heracles.
Alcmena once had washed and given the breast
To Heracles, a babe of ten months old,
And Iphicles his junior by a night;
And cradled both within a brazen shield,
A gorgeous trophy, which Amphitryon erst
Had stript from Ptereläus fall’n in fight.
She stroked their baby brows, and thus she said:
“Sleep, children mine, a light luxurious sleep,
Brother with brother: sleep, my boys, my life:
Blest in your slumber, in your waking blest!”
She spake and rocked the shield; and in his arms
Sleep took them. But at midnight, when the Bear
Wheels to his setting, in Orion’s front
Whose shoulder then beams broadest; Hera sent,
Mistress of wiles, two huge and hideous things,
Snakes with their scales of azure all on end,
To the broad portal of the chamber-door,
All to devour the infant Heracles.
They, all their length uncoiled upon the floor,
Writhed on to their blood-feast; a baleful light
Gleamed in their eyes, rank venom they spat forth.
But when with lambent tongues they neared the cot,
Alcmena’s babes (for Zeus was watching all)
Woke, and throughout the chamber there was light.
Then Iphicles — so soon as he descried
The fell brutes peering o’er the hollow shield,
And saw their merciless fangs — cried lustily,
And kicked away his coverlet of down,
Fain to escape. But Heracles, he clung
Round them with warlike hands, in iron grasp
Prisoning the two: his clutch upon their throat,
The deadly snake’s laboratory, where
He brews such poisons as e’en heaven abhors.
They twined and twisted round the babe that, born
After long travail, ne’er had shed a tear
E’en in his nursery; soon to quit their hold,
For powerless seemed their spines. Alcmena heard,
While her lord slept, the crying, and awoke.
“Amphitryon, up: chill fears take hold on me.
Up: stay not to put sandals on thy feet.
Hear’st thou our child, our younger, how he cries?
Seest thou yon walls illumed at dead of night,
But not by morn’s pure beam? I know, I know,
Sweet lord, that some strange thing is happening here.”
She spake; and he, upleaping at her call,
Made swiftly for the sword of quaint device
That aye hung dangling o’er his cedarn couch:
And he was reaching at his span-new belt,
The scabbard (one huge piece of lotus-wood)
Poised on his arm; when suddenly the night
Spread out her hands, and all was dark again.
Then cried he to his slaves, whose sleep was deep:
“Quick, slaves of mine; fetch fire from yonder hearth:
And force with all your strength the doorbolts back!
Up, loyal-hearted slaves: the master calls.”
Forth came at once the slaves with lighted lamps.
The house was all astir with hurrying feet.
But when they saw the suckling Heracles
With the two brutes grasped firm in his soft hands,
They shouted with one voice. But he must show
The reptiles to Amphitryon; held aloft
His hands in childish glee, and laughed and laid
At his sire’s feet the monsters still in death.
Then did Alcmena to her bosom take
The terror-blanched and passionate Iphicles:
Cradling the other in a lambswool quilt,
Her lord once more bethought him of his rest.
Now cocks had thrice sung out that night was e’er.
Then went Alcmena forth and told the thing
To Teiresias the seer, whose words were truth,
And bade him rede her what the end should be: —
‘And if the gods bode mischief, hide it not,
Pitying, from me: man shall not thus avoid
The doom that Fate upon her distaff spins.
Son of Eueres, thou hast ears to hear.’
Thus spake the queen, and thus he made reply:
“Mother of monarchs, Perseus’ child, take heart;
And look but on the fairer side of things.
For by the precious light that long ago
Left tenantless these eyes, I swear that oft
Achaia’s maidens, as when eve is high
They mould the silken yarn upon their lap,
Shall tell Alcmena’s story: blest art thou
Of women. Such a man in this thy son
Shall one day scale the star-encumbered heaven:
His amplitude of chest bespeaks him lord
Of all the forest beasts and all mankind.
Twelve tasks accomplished he must dwell with Zeus;
His flesh given over to Trachinian fires;
And son-in-law be hailed of those same gods
Who sent yon skulking brutes to slay thy babe.
Lo! the day cometh when the fawn shall couch
In the wolfs lair, nor fear the spiky teeth
That would not harm him. But, O lady, keep
Yon smouldering fire alive; prepare you piles
Of fuel, bramble-sprays or fern or furze
Or pear-boughs dried with swinging in the wind:
And let the kindled wild-wood burn those snakes
At midnight, when they looked to slay thy babe.
And let at dawn some handmaid gather up
The ashes of the fire, and diligently
Convey and cast each remnant o’er the stream
Faced by clov’n rocks, our boundary: then return
Nor look behind. And purify your home
First with sheer sulphur, rain upon it then,
(Chaplets of olive wound about your heads,)
Innocuous water, and the customed salt.
Lastly, to Zeus almighty slay a boar:
So shall ye vanquish all your enemies.”
Spake Teiresias, and wheeling (though his years
Weighed on him sorely) gained his ivory car.
And Heracles as some young orchard-tree
Grew up, Amphitryon his reputed sire.
Old Linus taught him letters, Phoebus’ child,
A dauntless toiler by the midnight lamp.
Each fall whereby the sons of Argos fell,
The flingers by cross-buttock, each his man
By feats of wrestling: all that boxers e’er,
Grim in their gauntlets, have devised, or they
Who wage mixed warfare and, adepts in art,
Upon the foe fall headlong: all such lore
Phocian Harpalicus gave him, Hermes’ son:
Whom no man might behold while yet far off
And wait his armed onset undismayed:
A brow so truculent roofed so stern a face.
To launch, and steer in safety round the goal,
Chariot and steed, and damage ne’er a wheel,
This the lad learned of fond Amphitryon’s self.
Many a fair prize from listed warriors he
Had won on Argive racegrounds; yet the car
Whereon he sat came still unshattered home,
What gaps were in his harness time had made.
Then with couched lance to reach the foe, his targe
Covering his rear, and bide the biting sword;
Or, on the warpath, place his ambuscade,
Marshal his lines and rally his cavaliers;
This knightly Castor learned him, erst exiled
From Argos, when her realms with all their wealth
Of vineyards fell to Tydeus, who received
Her and her chariots at Adrastus’ hand.
Amongst the Heroes none was Castor’s match
Till age had dimmed the glory of his youth.
Such tutors this fond mother gave her son.
The stripling’s bed was at his father’s side,
One after his own heart, a lion’s skin.
His dinner, roast meat, with a loaf that filled
A Dorian basket, you might soothly say
Had satisfied a delver; and to close
The day he took, sans fire, a scanty meal.
A simple frock went halfway down his leg:
IDYLL XXV. Heracles the Lion Slayer.
To whom thus spake the herdsman of the herd,
Pausing a moment from his handiwork:
“Friend, I will solve thy questions, for I fear
The angry looks of Hermes of the roads.
No dweller in the skies is wroth as he,
With him who saith the asking traveller nay.
“The flocks Augéas owns, our gracious lord,
One pasture pastures not, nor one fence bounds.
They wander, look you, some by Elissus’ banks
Or god-beloved Alphéus’ sacred stream,
Some by Buprasion, where the grape abounds,
Some here: their folds stand separate. But before
His herds, though they be myriad, yonder glades
That belt the broad lake round lie fresh and fair
For ever: for the low-lying meadows take
The dew, and teem with herbage honeysweet,
To lend new vigour to the hornèd kine.
Here on thy right their stalls thou canst descry
By the flowing river, for all eyes to see:
Here, where the platans blossom all the year,
And glimmers green the olive that enshrines
Rural Apollo, most august of gods.
Hard by, fair mansions have been reared for us
His herdsmen; us who guard with might and main
His riches that are more than tongue may tell:
Casting our seed o’er fallows thrice upturn’d
Or four times by the share; the bounds whereof
Well do the delvers know, whose busy feet
Troop to his wine-vats in fair summer-time.
Yea, all these acres wise Augéas owns,
These corn-clad uplands and these orchards green,
Far as yon ledges whence the cataracts leap.
Here do we haunt, here toil, as is the wont
Of labourers in the fields, the livelong day.
But prythee tell me thou — so shalt thou best
Serve thine own interests — wherefore art thou here?
Seeking Augéas, or mayhap some slave
That serves him? I can tell thee and I will
All thou would’st know: for of no churlish blood
Thou earnest, nor wert nurtured as a churl:
That read I in thy stateliness of form;
The sons of heaven move thus among mankind.”
Then answered him the warrior son of Zeus.
“Yea, veteran, I would see the Epéan King
Augéas; surely for this end I came.
If he bides there amongst his citizens,
Ruling the folk, determining the laws,
Look, father; bid some serf to be my guide,
Some honoured master-worker in the fields,
Who to shrewd questions shrewdly can reply.
Are not we made dependent each on each?”
To him the good old swain made answer thus:
“Stranger, some god hath timed thy visit here,
And given thee straightway all thy heart’s desire.
Hither Augéas, offspring of the Sun,
Came, with young Phyleus splendid in his strength,
But yesterday from the city, to review
(Not in one day) his multitudinous wealth,
Methinks e’en princes say within themselves,
‘The safeguard of the flock’s the master’s eye.’