Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A FABLE FOR LYDIA, by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN Poet's Biography First Line: Sweet love is slain! I saw him at your gates Last Line: Of high olympus, silent watching. Subject(s): Goddesses & Gods; Legends; Mythology; Zeus | ||||||||
Sweet Love is slain! I saw him at your gates Prostrate, ah me! upon th' ensanguined ground, Slain too with his own arrow and by you! What dreadful and most clamorous deed For vengeance this, O Fairest Cruelty, Than Artemis more cruel when she slew The children of the tearful Niobe Repentant of her boast. Who would not weep Save you, to see him marbled there in death, His traitrous arrow in his gaping wound; The crimson fountain of his streaming life Poured out upon the pitying earth, his locks Astray upon his alabaster brow With veilèd eyes beneath pale pencilled lids, Eclipsed in darkness. Woe, deep woe and pain Divinely bitter in the breasts of all The gods, and cloud about Olympian heights Heavy with sorrow of the brooding storm; And direst wrath within Olympian halls, For that young Eros lies untimely dead. Zeus lays his hand upon his thunderbolt, And in the darkened caverns of his mind Wrath mutters, while at the presage of his frown O'er drooping eyes glowing with pented lightnings All heaven pales, and Heré veils her face With trembling hands. Great Mulciber, aloft His mighty hammer swung to smite and shatter, Stands, a statued rage; Apollo starts And grips his silver bow, one hand upon His swiftest shaft ablaze with restless fire; And by him panoplied Minerva lifts Her poisèd spear keen with a thousand deaths, While on her shield the Gorgoned locks hiss wrath. So all the gods in fair Olympus' round, Each in the several manners of their powers, Divinely angry and divinely swift To vengeance, rapt in the amazèd rage Of sudden harm breaking the halcyon joy Of their Olympian calm, together rise Threatening. But chief the Cytherean goddess, The roses slain in either cheek, and all Her loosened tresses streaming down Cascaded gold in riotous neglect, Lifts up her voice piercing and wailing out Upon the shuddering winds that bear her grief To the four ends of earth disconsolate; For she is mother of young Eros dead. And at the foot of Zeus' throne she kneels With outstretched arms and slender petaled hands, And prays the great Ceraunian Father thus: "Not vengeance do I seek, O Thunderer, Not thy red bolt upon the guilty head For what avail that now to Eros slain? Though just thy vengeance for the sacrilege But life again for Eros, life renewed, Immortal save from his own arrow sent By hand of mortal, who O'ercomes the god Himself and slays him with the fatal shaft Aimed at his conqueror: For so the Fates In council sacrosanct decreed, beyond Thy might to break or bendFrown not, O Zeus, Father of gods and men that so I plead! But hold thy hand! Release the eager bolt, And hear me more before it be too late! For in that far inscrutable abyss Of Fate, that underlies Olympus' heights And all the vast foundations of the world, 'Twas willed of eld that only by the hand That breached the fatal way of horrid death To Eros' heart, could life be brought again; If that same hand but pluck the arrow forth And turn it on the heart that owns the hand, Eros again will breathe immortal life And gladden our high court with ancient joy. Stay then thy hand, hurl not the dreadful bolt! And seal not on the brow of Eros death Forever! And in her heart that slew, the barb Transfixed shall bring not death, but fairer life, For fatal unto him alone alas! his shaft. Straightway to earth will I with wingèd speed And seek out her, who slew my boy and made Olympus dark for all the gods, and earth Disconsolatea goddess at her feet, Praying her tender pity for a god, My son!" So saying rises the mother goddess, And gathering, as she rises, her unloosed locks, With delicate and deftest fingers winds The glittering strands in queenly coils about Her head, and crowns it with their massy gold. And going to the jacinth parapet That rings Olympus height, where coo her doves In silvery harness to her ivory car, Mounts, and speeding downward to the earth Wings swiftly through the flowing air that sings In amorous cadence through the slender spokes Of golden wheels, and far into the deep Of blue below sinks from the straining sight Of all the rangèd gods upon the verge Of high Olympus, silent watching. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SO HELP ME SAPPHO by ANNE WALDMAN LEDA AND THE SWAN by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS HELIADES: ZEUS, BRAZEN THUNDER-HURLER by AESCHYLUS ZEUS TOO IS A VICTIM by ASCLEPIADES OF SAMOS THE SUN-THIEF by RHYS CARPENTER TRANSLATIONS OF PINDAR: 4. TO PSAUMIS OF CAMARINA by REGINALD HEBER |
|