"There, my Balaustion! All is summed and said.

No other cause of quarrel with yourself!

Euripides and Aristophanes

Differ: he needs must round our difference

Into the mob's ear; with the mob I plead.

You angrily start forward 'This to me?'

No speck of this on you the thrice refined!

Could parley be restricted to us two,

My first of duties were to clear up doubt

As to our true divergence each from each.

Does my opinion so diverge from yours?

Probably less than little--not at all!

To know a matter, for my very self

And intimates--that 's one thing: to imply

By 'knowledge'--loosing whatsoe'er I know

Among the vulgar who, by mere mistake,

May brain themselves and me in consequence,--

That 's quite another. 'O the daring flight!

This only bard maintains the exalted brow,

Nor grovels in the slime nor fears the gods!'

Did _I_ fear--_I_ play superstitious fool,

Who, with the due proviso, introduced,

Active and passive, their whole company

As creatures too absurd for scorn itself?

Zeus? I have styled him--'slave, mere thrashing-block!'

I 'll tell you: in my very next of plays,

At Bacchos' feast, in Bacchos' honor, full

In front of Bacchos' representative.

I mean to make main-actor--Bacchos' self!

Forth shall he strut, apparent, first to last,

A blockhead, coward, braggart, liar, thief,

Demonstrated all these by his own mere

Xanthias the man-slave: such man shows such god

Shamed to brute-beastship by comparison!

And when ears have their fill of his abuse,

And eyes are sated with his pummelling,--

My Choros taking care, by, all the while

Singing his glory, that men recognize

A god in the abused and pummelled beast,--

Then, should one ear be stopped of auditor,

Should one spectator shut revolted eye,--

Why, the Priest's self will first raise outraged voice:

'Back, thou barbarian, thou ineptitude!

Does not most license hallow best our day,

And least decorum prove its strictest rite?

Since Bacchos bids his followers play the fool,

And there 's no fooling like a majesty

Mocked at,--who mocks the god, obeys the law--

Law which, impute but indiscretion to,

And ... why, the spirit of Euripides

Is evidently active in the world!'

Do I stop here? No! feat of flightier force!

See Hermes! what commotion raged,--reflect!--

When imaged god alone got injury

By drunkards' frolic! How Athenai stared

Aghast, then fell to frenzy, fit on fit,--

Ever the last, the longest! At this hour,

The craze abates a little: so, my Play

Shall have up Hermes: and a Karion, slave,

(Since there 's no getting lower) calls our friend

The profitable god, we honor so,

Whatever contumely fouls the mouth--

Bids him go earn more honest livelihood

By washing tripe in well-trough--wash he does,

Duly obedient! Have I dared my best?

Asklepios, answer!--deity in vogue,

Who visits Sophokles familiarly,

If you believe the old man,--at his age,

Living is dreaming, and strange guests haunt door

Of house, belike, peep through and tap at times

When a friend yawns there, waiting to be fetched,--

At any rate, to memorize the fact,

He has spent money, set an altar up

In the god's temple, now in much repute.

That temple-service trust me to describe--

Cheaters and choused, the god, his brace of girls,

Their snake, and how they manage to snap gifts

'And consecrate the same into a bag,'

For whimsies done away with in the dark!

As if, a stone's throw from that theatre

Whereon I thus unmask their dupery,

The thing were not religious and august!

"Of Sophokles himself--nor word nor sign

Beyond a harmless parody or so!

He founds no anti-school, upsets no faith,

But, living, lets live, the good easy soul

Who,--if he saves his cash, unpoetlike,

Loves wine and--never mind what other sport,

Boasts for his father just a swordblade-smith,

Proves but queer captain when the people claim,

For one who conquered with 'Antigone,'

The right to undertake a squadron's charge,--

And needs the son's help now to finish plays,

Seeing his dotage calls for governance

And Iophon to share his property,--

Why, of all this, reported true, I breathe

Not one word--true or false, I like the man!

Sophokles lives and lets live: long live he!

Otherwise,--sharp the scourge and hard the blow!

"And what 's my teaching but--accept the old,

Contest the strange! acknowledge work that 's done,

Misdoubt men who have still their work to do!

Religions, laws and customs, poetries,

Are old? So much achieved victorious truth!

Each work was product of a lifetime, wrung

From each man by an adverse world: for why?

He worked, destroying other older work

Which the world loved and so was loth to lose.

Whom the world beat in battle--dust and ash!

Who beat the world, left work in evidence,

And wears its crown till new men live new lives,

And fight new fights, and triumph in their turn.

I mean to show you on the stage! you 'll see

My Just Judge only venture to decide

Between two suitors, which is god, which man,

By thrashing both of them as flesh can bear.

You shall agree,--whichever bellows first,

He 's human; who holds longest out, divine:

That is the only equitable test!

Cruelty? Pray, who pricked them on to court

My thong's award? Must they needs dominate?

Then I--rebel! Their instinct grasps the new?

Mine bids retain the old: a fight must be,

And which is stronger the event will show.

Oh, but the pain! Your proved divinity

Still smarts all reddened? And the rightlier served!

Was not some man's-flesh in him, after all?

Do let us lack no frank acknowledgment

There 's nature common to both gods and men!

All of them--spirit? What so winced was clay!

Away pretence to some exclusive sphere

Cloud-nourishing a sole selected few

Fume-fed with self-superiority!

I stand up for the common coarse-as-clay

Existence,--stamp and ramp with heel and hoof

On solid vulgar life, you fools disown!

Make haste from your unreal eminence,

And measure lengths with me upon that ground

Whence this mud-pellet sings and summons you!

I know the soul, too, how the spark ascends

And how it drops apace and dies away.

I am your poet-peer, man thrice your match!

I too can lead an airy life when dead,

Fly like Kinesias when I 'm cloud-ward bound;

But here, no death shall mix with life it mars!

"So, my old enemy who caused the fight,

Own I have beaten you, Euripides!

Or,--if your advocate would contravene,--

Help him, Balaustion! Use the rosy strength!

I have not done my utmost,--treated you

As I might Aristullos, mint-perfumed,--

Still, let the whole rage burst in brave attack!

Don't pay the poor ambiguous compliment

Of fearing any pearl-white knuckled fist

Will damage this broad buttress of a brow!

Fancy yourself my Aristonumos,

Ameipsias or Sannurion: punch and pound!

Three cuckoos who cry 'cuckoo'! much I care!

They boil a stone! _Neblaretai! Rattei!_"

* * * * *

Cannot your task have end here, Euthukles?

Day by day glides our galley on its path:

Still sunrise and still sunset, Rhodes half-reached,

And still, my patient scribe! no sunset's peace

Descends more punctual than that brow's incline

O'er tablets which your serviceable hand

Prepares to trace. Why treasure up, forsooth,

These relics of a night that make me rich,

But, half-remembered merely, leave so poor

Each stranger to Athenai and her past?

For--how remembered! As some greedy hind

Persuades a honeycomb, beyond the due,

To yield its hoarding,--heedless what alloy

Of the poor bee's own substance taints the gold

Which, unforced, yields few drops, but purity,--

So would you fain relieve of load this brain,

Though the hived thoughts must bring away, with strength,

What words and weakness, strength's receptacle--

Wax from the store! Yet,--aching soothed away,--

Accept the compound! No suspected scent

But proves some rose was rifled, though its ghost

Scarce lingers with what promised musk and myrrh.

No need of farther squeezing! What remains

Can only be Balaustion, just her speech!

Ah, but--because speech serves a purpose still!--

* * * * *

He ended with that flourish. I replied:

"Fancy myself your Aristonumos?

Advise me, rather, to remain myself,

Balaustion,--mindful what mere mouse confronts

The forest-monarch Aristophanes!

I who, a woman, claim no quality

Beside the love of all things lovable

Created by a power pre-eminent

In knowledge, as in love I stand perchance,

--You, the consummately-creative! How

Should I, then, dare deny submissive trust

To any process aiming at result

Such as you say your songs are pregnant with?

Result, all judge: means, let none scrutinize

Save those aware how glory best is gained

By daring means to end, ashamed of shame,

Constant in faith that only good works good,

While evil yields no fruit but impotence!

Graced with such plain good, I accept the means!

Nay, if result itself in turn become

Means,--who shall say?--to ends still loftier yet,--

Though still the good prove hard to understand,

The bad still seemingly predominate,--

Never may I forget which order bears

The burden, toils to win the great reward,

And finds, in failure, the grave punishment,

So, meantime, claims of me a faith I yield!

Moreover, a mere woman, I recoil

From what may prove man's-work permissible,

Imperative. Rough strokes surprise: what then?

Some lusty armsweep needs must cause the crash

Of thorn and bramble, ere those shrubs, those flowers,

We fain would have earth yield exclusively,

Are sown, matured and garlanded for boys

And girls, who know not how the growth was gained.

Finally, am I not a foreigner?

No born and bred Athenian,--isled about,

I scarce can drink, like you, at every breath,

Just some particular doctrine which may best

Explain the strange thing I revolt against--

How--by involvement, who may extricate?--

Religion perks up through impiety,

Law leers with license, folly wise-like frowns,

The seemly lurks inside the abominable.

But opposites,--each neutralizes each

Haply by mixture: what should promise death,

May haply give the good ingredient force,

Disperse in fume the antagonistic ill.

This institution, therefore,--Comedy,--

By origin, a rite; by exercise,

Proved an achievement tasking poet's power

To utmost, eking legislation out

Beyond the legislator's faculty,

Playing the censor where the moralist

Declines his function, far too dignified

For dealing with minute absurdities;

By efficacy,--virtue's guard, the scourge

Of vice, each folly's fly-flap, arm in aid

Of all that 's righteous, customary, sound

And wholesome; sanctioned therefore,--better say,

Prescribed for fit acceptance of this age

By, not alone the long recorded roll

Of earlier triumphs, but, success to-day--

(The multitude as prompt recipient still

Of good gay teaching from that monitor

They crowned this morning--Aristophanes--

As when Sousarion's car first traversed street)--

This product of Athenai--_I_ dispute,

Impugn? There 's just one only circumstance

Explains that! I, poor critic, see, hear, feel;

But eyes, ears, senses prove me--foreigner!

Who shall gainsay that the raw new-come guest

Blames oft, too sensitive? On every side

Of--larger than your stage--life's spectacle,

Convention here permits and there forbids

Impulse and action, nor alleges more

Than some mysterious 'So do all, and so

Does no one:' which the hasty stranger blames

Because, who bends the head unquestioning,

Transgresses, turns to wrong what else were right,

By failure of a reference to law

Beyond convention; blames unjustly, too--

As if, through that defect, all gained were lost

And slave-brand set on brow indelibly;--

Blames unobservant or experienceless

That men, like trees, if stout and sound and sane,

Show stem no more affected at the root

By bough's exceptional submissive dip

Of leaf and bell, light danced at end of spray

To windy fitfulness in wayward sport,--

No more lie prostrate,--than low files of flower

Which, when the blast goes by, unruffled raise

Each head again o'er ruder meadow-wreck

Of thorn and thistle that refractory

Demurred to cower at passing wind's caprice.

Why shall not guest extend like charity,

Conceive how,--even when astounded most

That natives seem to acquiesce in muck

Changed by prescription, they affirm, to gold,--

Such may still bring to test, still bear away

Safely and surely much of good and true

Though latent ore, themselves unspecked, unspoiled?

Fresh bathed i' the icebrook, any hand may pass

A placid moment through the lamp's fierce flame:

And who has read your 'Lemnians,' seen 'The Hours,'

Heard 'Female-Playhouse-seat-Preoccupants,'

May feel no worse effect than, once a year,

Those who leave decent vesture, dress in rags

And play the mendicant, conform thereby

To country's rite, and then, no beggar-taint

Retained, don vesture due next morrow-day.

What if I share the stranger's weakness then?

Well, could I also show his strength, his sense

Untutored, ay!--but then untampered with!

"I fancy, though the world seems old enough,

Though Hellas be the sole unbarbarous land,

Years may conduct to such extreme of age,

And outside Hellas so isles new may lurk,

That haply,--when and where remain a dream!--

In fresh days when no Hellas fills the world,

In novel lands as strange where, all the same,

Their men and women yet behold, as we,

Blue heaven, black earth, and love, hate, hope and fear.

Over again, unhelped by Attiké--

Haply some philanthropic god steers bark,

Gift-laden, to the lonely ignorance

Islanded, say, where mist and snow mass hard

To metal--ay, those Kassiterides!

Then asks: 'Ye apprehend the human form.

What of this statue, made to Pheidias' mind,

This picture, as it pleased our Zeuxis paint?

Ye too feel truth, love beauty: judge of these!'

Such strangers may judge feebly, stranger-like:

'Each hair too indistinct--for, see our own!

Hands, not skin-colored as these hands we have,

And lo, the want of due decorum here!

A citizen, arrayed in civic garb,

Just as he walked your streets apparently,

Yet wears no sword by side, adventures thus,

In thronged Athenai! foolish painter's-freak!

While here 's his brother-sculptor found at fault

Still more egregiously, who shames the world,

Shows wrestler, wrestling at the public games,

Atrociously exposed from head to foot!'

Sure, the Immortal would impart at once

Our slow-stored knowledge, how small truths suppressed

Conduce to the far greater truth's display,--

Would replace simple by instructed sense,

And teach them how Athenai first so tamed

The natural fierceness that her progeny

Discarded arms nor feared the beast in man:

Wherefore at games, where earth's wise gratitude,

Proved by responsive culture, claimed the prize

For man's mind, body, each in excellence,--

When mind had bared itself, came body's turn,

And only irreligion grudged the gods

One naked glory of their master-work

Where all is glorious rightly understood,--

The human frame; enough that man mistakes:

Let him not think the gods mistaken too!

"But, peradventure, if the stranger's eye

Detected ... Ah, too high my fancy-flight!

Pheidias, forgive, and Zeuxis bear with me--

How on your faultless should I fasten fault

Of my own framing, even? Only say,--

Suppose the impossible were realized,

And some as patent incongruity,

Unseemliness,--of no more warrant, there

And then, than now and here, whate'er the time

And place,--I say, the Immortal,--who can doubt?--

Would never shrink, but own, 'The blot escaped

Our artist: thus he shows humanity!'

"May stranger tax one peccant part in thee,

Poet, three-parts divine! May I proceed?

"'Comedy is prescription and a rite.'

Since when? No growth of the blind antique time,

'It rose in Attiké with liberty;

When freedom falls, it too will fall.' Scarce so!

Your games,--the Olumpian, Zeus gave birth to these;

Your Puthian,--these were Phoibos' institute.

Isthmian, Nemeian,--Theseus, Herakles

Appointed each, the boys and barbers say!

Earth's day is growing late: where 's Comedy?

'Oh, that commenced an age since,--two, belike,--

In Megara, whence here they brought the thing!'

Or I misunderstand, or here 's the fact--

Your grandsire could recall that rustic song,

How such-an-one was thief, and miser such,

And how,--immunity from chastisement

Once promised to bold singers of the same

By daylight on the drunkard's holiday,--

The clever fellow of the joyous troop

Tried acting what before he sang about,

Acted and stole, or hoarded, acting too:

While his companions ranged a-row, closed up

For Choros,--bade the general rabblement

Sit, see, hear, laugh,--not join the dance themselves.

Soon, the same clever fellow found a mate,

And these two did the whole stage-mimicking,

Still closer in approach to Tragedy,--

So led the way to Aristophanes,

Whose grandsire saw Sousarion, and whose sire--

Chionides; yourself wrote 'Banqueters'

When Aischulos had made 'Prometheus,' nay,

All of the marvels; Sophokles,--I 'll cite,

'Oidipous'--and Euripides--I bend

The head--'Medeia' henceforth awed the world!

'Banqueters,' 'Babylonians'--next come you!

Surely the great days that left Hellas free

Happened before such advent of huge help,

Eighty-years-late assistance? Marathon,

Plataia, Salamis were fought, I think,

Before new educators stood reproved,

Or foreign legates blushed, excepted to!

Where did the helpful rite pretend its rise?

Did it break forth, as gifts divine are wont,

Plainly authentic, incontestably

Adequate to the helpful ordinance?

Founts, dowered with virtue, pulse out pure from source;

'T is there we taste the god's benign intent:

Not when,--fatigued away by journey, foul

With brutish trampling,--crystal sinks to slime,

And lymph forgets the first salubriousness.

Sprang Comedy to light thus crystal-pure?

'Nowise!' yourself protest with vehemence;

'Gross, bestial, did the clowns' diversion break;

Every successor paddled in the slush;

Nay, my contemporaries one and all

Gay played the mudlark till I joined their game;

Then was I first to change buffoonery

For wit, and stupid filth for cleanly sense,

Transforming pointless joke to purpose fine,

Transfusing rude enforcement of home-law--

"Drop knave's-tricks, deal more neighbor-like, ye boors!"--

With such new glory of poetic breath

As, lifting application far past use

O' the present, launched it o'er men's lowly heads

To future time, when high and low alike

Are dead and done with, while my airy power

Flies disengaged, as vapor from what stuff

It--say not, dwelt in--fitlier, dallied with

To forward work, which done,--deliverance brave,--

It soars away, and mud subsides to dust.

Say then, myself invented Comedy!'

"So mouths full many a famed Parabasis!

Agreed! No more, then, of prescriptive use,

Authorization by antiquity,

For what offends our judgment! 'T is your work,

Performed your way: not work delivered you

Intact, intact producible in turn.

Everywhere have you altered old to new--

Your will, your warrant: therefore, work must stand

Or stumble by intrinsic worth. What worth?

Its aim and object! Peace you advocate,

And war would fain abolish from the land:

Support religion, lash irreverence,

Yet laughingly administer rebuke

To superstitious folly,--equal fault!

While innovating rashness, lust of change,

New laws, new habits, manners, men and things,

Make your main quarry,--'oldest' meaning 'best.'

You check the fretful litigation-itch,

Withstand mob-rule, expose mob-flattery,

Punish mob-favorites; most of all press hard

On sophists who assist the demagogue,

And poets their accomplices in crime.

Such your main quarry,--by the way, you strike

Ignobler game, mere miscreants, snob or scamp,

Cowardly, gluttonous, effeminate:

Still with a bolt to spare when dramatist

Proves haply unproficient in his art,

Such aims--alone, no matter for the means--

Declare the unexampled excellence

Of their first author--Aristophanes!

"Whereat--Euripides, oh, not thyself--

Augustlier than the need!--thy century

Of subjects dreamed and dared and done, before

'Banqueters' gave dark earth enlightenment,

Or 'Babylonians' played Prometheus here,--

These let me summon to defend thy cause!

Lo, as indignantly took life and shape

Labor by labor, all of Herakles,--

Palpably fronting some o'erbold pretence

'Eurustheus slew the monsters, purged the world!'

So shall each poem pass you and imprint

Shame on the strange assurance. _You_ praised Peace?

Sing him full-face, Kresphontes! 'Peace' the theme?

'Peace, in whom depths of wealth lie,--of the blest

Immortals beauteousest,--

Come! for the heart within me dies away,

So long dost thou delay!

Oh, I have feared lest old age, much annoy,

Conquer me, quite outstrip the tardy joy,

Thy gracious triumph-season I would see,

The song, the dance, the sport, profuse of crowns to be.

But come! for my sake, goddess great and dear.

Come to the city here!

Hateful Sedition drive thou from our homes,

With Her who madly roams

Rejoicing in the steel against the life

That 's whetted--banish Strife!'

"Shall I proceed? No need of next and next!

That were too easy, play so presses play,

Trooping tumultuous, each with instance apt,

Each eager to confute the idle boast!

What virtue but stands forth panegyrized,

What vice, unburned by stigma, in the books

Which bettered Hellas,--beyond graven gold

Or gem-indenture, sung by Phoibos' self

And saved in Kunthia's mountain treasure-house--

Ere you, man, moralist, were youth or boy?

--Not praise which, in the proffer, mocks the praised

By sly admixture of the blameworthy

And enforced coupling of base fellowship,--

Not blame which gloats the while it frowning laughs,

'Allow one glance on horrors--laughable!'--

This man's entire of heart and soul, discharged

Its love or hate, each unalloyed by each,

On objects worthy either; earnestness,

Attribute him, and power! but novelty?

Nor his nor yours a doctrine--all the world's!

What man of full-grown sense and sanity

Holds other than the truth,--wide Hellas through,--

Though truth he acts discredit truth he holds?

What imbecile has dared to formulate

'Love war, hate peace, become a litigant!'--

And so preach on, reverse each rule of right

Because he quarrels, combats, goes to law?

No, for his comment runs, with smile or sigh

According to heart's temper, 'Peace were best,

Except occasions when we put aside

Peace, and bid all the blessings in her gift

Quick join the crows, for sake of Marathon!'

"'Nay,' you reply; for one, whose mind withstands

His heart, and, loving peace, for conscience' sake

Wants war,--you find a crowd of hypocrites

Whose conscience means ambition, grudge and greed.

On such, reproof, sonorous doctrine, melts

Distilled like universal but thin dew

Which all too sparsely covers country: dear,

No doubt, to universal crop and clown,

Still, each bedewed keeps his own head-gear dry

With upthrust _skiadeion_, shakes adroit

The droppings to his neighbor. No! collect

All of the moisture, leave unhurt the heads

Which nowise need a washing, save and store

And dash the whole condensed to one fierce spout

On some one evil-doer, sheltered close,--

The fool supposed,--till you beat guard away,

And showed your audience, not that war was wrong,

But Lamachos absurd,--case, crests and all,--

Not that democracy was blind of choice,

But Kleon and Huperbolos were shams:

Not superstition vile, but Nikias crazed,--

The concrete for the abstract; that 's the way!

What matters Choros crying 'Hence, impure!'

You cried 'Ariphrades does thus and thus!'

Now, earnestness seems never earnest more

Than when it dons for garb--indifference;

So, there 's much laughing: but, compensative,

When frowning follows laughter, then indeed

Scout innuendo, sarcasm, irony!--

Wit's polished warfare glancing at first graze

From off hard headpiece, coarsely-coated brain

O' the commonalty--whom, unless you prick

To purpose, what avails that finer pates

Succumb to simple scratching? Those--not these--

'T is Multitude, which, moved, fines Lamachos,

Banishes Kleon and burns Sokrates,

House over head, or, better, poisons him.

Therefore in dealing with King Multitude,

Club-drub the callous numskulls! In and in

Beat this essential consequential fact

That here they have a hater of the three,

Who hates in word, phrase, nickname, epithet

And illustration, beyond doubt at all!

And similarly, would you win assent

To--Peace, suppose? You tickle the tough hide

With good plain pleasure her concomitant--

And, past mistake again, exhibit Peace--

Peace, vintager and festive, cheesecake-time,

Hare-slice-and-peasoup-season, household-joy;

Theoria's beautiful belongings match

Opora's lavish condescendings: brief,

Since here the people are to judge, you press

Such argument as people understand:

If with exaggeration--what care you?

"Have I misunderstood you in the main?

No! then must answer be, such argument,

Such policy, no matter what good love

Or hate it help, in practice proves absurd,

Useless and null: henceforward intercepts

Sober effective blow at what you blame,

And renders nugatory rightful praise

Of thing or person. The coarse brush has daubed--

What room for the finer limner's pencil-mark?

Blame? You curse, rather, till who blames must blush--

Lean to apology or praise, more like!

Does garment, simpered o'er as white, prove gray?

'Black, blacker than Acharnian charcoal, black

Beyond Kimmerian, Stugian blackness black,'

You bawl, till men sigh 'nearer snowiness!'

What follows? What one faint-rewarding fall

Of foe belabored ne'er so lustily?

Laugh Lamachos from out the people's heart?

He died, commanding, 'hero,' say yourself!

Gibe Nikias into privacy?--nay, shake

Kleon a little from his arrogance

By cutting him to shoe-sole-shreds? I think,

He ruled his life long, and, when time was ripe,

Died fighting for amusement,--good tough hide!

Sokrates still goes up and down the streets,

And Aristullos puts his speech in book,

When both should be abolished long ago.

Nay, wretchedest of rags, Ariphrades--

You have been fouling that redoubtable

Harp-player, twenty years, with what effect?

Still he strums on, strums ever cheerily,

And earns his wage,--'Who minds a joke?' men say.

No, friend! The statues stand--mud-stained at most--

Titan or pygmy: what achieves their fall

Will be, long after mud is flung and spent,

Some clear thin spirit-thrust of lightning--truth!

"Your praise, then--honey-smearing helps your friend,

More than blame's ordure-smirch hurts foe, perhaps?

Peace, now, misunderstood, ne'er prized enough,

You have interpreted to ignorance

Till ignorance opes eye, bat-blind before,

And for the first time knows Peace means the power

On maw of pancake, cheese-cake, barley-cake,

No stop nor stint to stuffing. While, in camp,

Who fights chews rancid tunny, onions raw,

Peace sits at cosy feast with lamp and fire,

Complaisant smooth-sleeked flute-girls giggling gay.

How thick and fast the snow falls, freezing War

Who shrugs, campaigns it, and may break a shin

Or twist an ankle! come, who hesitates

To give Peace, over War, the preference?

Ah, friend--had this indubitable fact

Haply occurred to poor Leonidas,

How had he turned tail on Thermopulai!

It cannot be that even his few wits

Were addled to the point that, so advised,

Preposterous he had answered--'Cakes are prime,

Hearth-sides are snug, sleek dancing-girls have worth,

And yet--for country's sake, to save our gods

Their temples, save our ancestors their tombs,

Save wife and child and home and liberty,--

I would chew sliced salt-fish, bear snow--nay, starve,

If need were,--and by much prefer the choice!'

Why, friend, your genuine hero, all the while,

Has been--who served precisely for your butt--

Kleonumos that, wise, cast shield away

On battle-ground; cried 'Cake my buckler be,

Embossed with cream-clot! peace, not war, I choose,

Holding with Dikaiopolis!' Comedy

Shall triumph, Dikaiopolis win assent,

When Miltiades shall next shirk Marathon,

Themistokles swap Salamis for--cake,

And Kimon grunt 'Peace, grant me dancing-girls!'

But sooner, hardly! twenty-five years since,

The war began,--such pleas for Peace have reached

A reasonable age. The end shows all!

And so with all the rest you advocate!

'Wise folk leave litigation! 'ware the wasps!

Whoso loves law and lawyers, heliast-like,

Wants hemlock!' None shows that so funnily.

But, once cure madness, how comports himself

Your sane exemplar, what 's our gain thereby?

Philokleon turns Bdelukleon! just this change,--

New sanity gets straightway drunk as sow,

Cheats baker-wives, brawls, kicks, cuffs, curses folk,

Parades a shameless flute-girl, bandies filth

With his own son who cured his father's cold

By making him catch fever--funnily!

But as for curing love of lawsuits--faugh!

"And how does new improve upon the old

--Your boast--in even abusing? Rough, may be--

Still, honest was the old mode. 'Call thief--thief!'

But never call thief even--murderer!

Much less call fop and fribble, worse one whit

Than fribble and fop! Spare neither! beat your brains

For adequate invective,--cut the life

Clean out each quality,--but load your lash

With no least lie, or we pluck scourge from hand!

Does poet want a whipping, write bad verse,

Inculcate foul deeds? There 's the fault to flog!

You vow, 'The rascal cannot read nor write,

Spends more in buying fish than Morsimos,

Somebody helps his Muse and courts his wife,

His uncle deals in crockery, and last--

Himself 's a stranger!' That 's the cap and crown

Of stinging-nettle, that 's the master-stroke!

What poet-rival,--after 'housebreaker,'

'Fish-gorging,' 'midnight footpad,' and so forth,--

Proves not, beside, 'a stranger'? Chased from charge

To charge, and, lie by lie, laughed out of court,--

Lo, wit's sure refuge, satire's grand resource--

All, from Kratinos downward--'strangers' they!

Pity the trick's too facile! None so raw

Among your playmates but have caught the ball

And sent it back as briskly to--yourself!

You too, my Attic, are styled 'stranger'--Rhodes,

Aigina, Lindos or Kameiros,--nay,

'T was Egypt reared (if Eupolis be right)

Who wrote the comedy (Kratinos vows)

Kratinos helped a little! Kleon's self

Was nigh promoted Comic, when he haled

My poet into court, and o'er the coals

Hauled and re-hauled 'the stranger,--insolent,

Who brought out plays, usurped our privilege!'

Why must you Comics one and all take stand

On lower ground than truth from first to last?

Why all agree to let folk disbelieve,

So laughter but reward a funny lie?

Repel such onslaughts--answer, sad and grave,

Your fancy-fleerings--who would stoop so low?

Your own adherents whisper,--when disgust

Too menacingly thrills Logeion through

At--Perikles invents this present war

Because men robbed his mistress of three maids--

Or--Sokrates wants burning, house o'er head,--

'What, so obtuse, not read between the lines?

Our poet means no mischief! All should know--

Ribaldry here implies a compliment!

He deals with things, not men,--his men are things--

Each represents a class, plays figure-head

And names the ship: no meaner than the first

Would serve; he styles a trireme "Sokrates"--

Fears "Sokrates" may prove unseaworthy,

(That's merely--"Sophists are the bane of boys")

Rat-riddled ("they are capable of theft")

Rotten or whatsoe'er shows ship-disease,

("They war with gods and worship whirligig.")

You never took the joke for earnest? scarce

Supposed mere figure-head meant entire ship,

And Sokrates--the whole fraternity?'

"This then is Comedy, our sacred song,

Censor of vice, and virtue's guard as sure:

Manners-instructing, morals' stop-estray,

Which, born a twin with public liberty,

Thrives with its welfare, dwindles with its wane!

Liberty? what so exquisitely framed

And fitted to suck dry its life of life

To last faint fibre?--since that life is truth.

You who profess your indignation swells

At sophistry, when specious words confuse

Deeds right and wrong, distinct before, you say--

(Though all that 's done is--dare veracity,

Show that the true conception of each deed

Affirmed, in vulgar parlance, 'wrong' or 'right,'

Proves to be neither, as the hasty hold,

But, change your side, shoots light, where dark alone

Was apprehended by the vulgar sense)--

You who put sophistry to shame, and shout

'There 's but a single side to man and thing;

A side so much more big than thing or man

Possibly can be, that--believe 't is true?

Such were too marvellous simplicity!'--

Confess, those sophists whom yourself depict,

(--Abide by your own painting!) what they teach,

They wish at least their pupil to believe,

And, what believe, to practise! Did _you_ wish

Hellas should haste, as taught, with torch in hand,

And fire the horrid Speculation-shop?

Straight the shop's master rose and showed the mob

What man was your so monstrous Sokrates;

Himself received amusement, why not they?

Just as did Kleon first play magistrate

And bid you put your birth in evidence--

Since no unbadged buffoon is licensed here

To shame us all when foreign guests may mock--

Then,--birth established, fooling licensed you,--

He, duty done, resumed mere auditor,

Laughed with the loudest at his Lamia-shape,

Kukloboros-roaring, and the camel-rest.

Nay, Aristullos,--once your volley spent

On the male-Kirké and her swinish crew,--

PLATON,--so others call the youth we love,--

Sends your performance to the curious king--

'Do you desire to know Athenai's knack

At turning seriousness to pleasantry?

Read this! One Aristullos means myself.

The author is indeed a merry grig!'

Nay, it would seem as if yourself were bent

On laying down the law, 'Tell lies I must--

Aforethought and of purpose, no mistake!'

When forth yourself step, tell us from the stage,

'Here you behold the King of Comedy--

Me, who, the first, have purged my every piece

From each and all my predecessors' filth,

Abjured those satyr-adjuncts sewn to bid

The boys laugh, satyr-jokes whereof not one

Least sample but would make my hair turn gray

Beyond a twelvemonth's ravage! I renounce

Mountebank-claptrap, such as firework-fizz

And torchflare, or else nuts and barleycorns

Scattered among the crowd, to scramble for

And stop their mouths with; no such stuff shames me!

Who--what's more serious--know both when to strike

And when to stay my hand: once dead, my foe,

Why, done, my fighting! _I_ attack a corpse?

I spare the corpse-like even! punish age?

I pity from my soul that sad effete

Toothless old mumbler called Kratinos! once

My rival,--now, alack, the dotard slinks

Ragged and hungry to what hole 's his home;

Ay, slinks through byways where no passenger

Flings him a bone to pick. You formerly

Adored the Muses' darling: dotard now,

Why, he may starve! O mob most mutable!'

So you harangued in person; while,--to point

Precisely out, these were but lies you launched,--

Prompt, a play followed primed with satyr-frisks,

No spice spared of the stomach-turning stew,

Full-fraught with torch-display, and barley-throw,

And Kleon, dead enough, bedaubed afresh;

While daft Kratinos--home to hole trudged he,

Wrung dry his wit to the last vinous dregs,

Decanted them to 'Bottle,'--beat, next year,--

'Bottle' and dregs--your best of 'Clouds' and dew!

Where, Comic King, may keenest eye detect

Improvement on your predecessors' work

Except in lying more audaciously?

"Why--genius! That's the grandeur, that 's the gold--

That 's _you_--superlatively true to touch--

Gold, leaf or lump--gold, anyhow the mass

Takes manufacture and proves Pallas' casque

Or, at your choice, simply a cask to keep

Corruption from decay. Your rivals' hoard

May ooze forth, lacking such preservative:

Yours cannot--gold plays guardian far too well!

Genius, I call _you:_ dross, your rivals share;

Ay, share and share alike, too! says the world,

However you pretend supremacy

In aught beside that gold, your very own.

Satire? 'Kratinos for our satirist!'

The world cries. Elegance? 'Who elegant

As Eupolis?' resounds as noisily.

Artistic fancy? Choros-creatures quaint?

Magnes invented 'Birds' and 'Frogs' enough,

Archippos punned, Hegemon parodied,

To heart's content, before you stepped on stage.

Moral invective? Eupolis exposed

'That prating beggar, he who stole the cup,'

Before your 'Clouds' rained grime on Sokrates;

Nay, what beat 'Clouds' but 'Konnos,' muck for mud?

Courage? How long before, well-masked, you poured

Abuse on Eukrates and Lusikles,

Did Telekleides and Hermippos pelt

Their Perikles and Kumon? standing forth,

Bareheaded, not safe crouched behind a name,--

Philonides or else Kallistratos,

Put forth, when danger threatened,--mask for face,

To bear the brunt,--if blame fell, take the blame,--

If praise ... why, frank laughed Aristophanes

'They write such rare stuff? No, I promise you!'

Rather, I see all true improvements, made

Or making, go against you--tooth and nail

Contended with; 't is still Moruchides,

'T is Euthumenes, Surakosios, nay,

Argurrhios and Kinesias,--common sense

And public shame, these only cleanse your sty!

Coerced, prohibited,--you grin and bear,

And, soon as may be, hug to heart again

The banished nastiness too dear to drop!

Krates could teach and practise festive song

Yet scorn scurrility; as gay and good,

Pherekrates could follow. _Who_ loosed hold,

Must let fall rose-wreath, stoop to muck once more?

Did your particular self advance in aught,

Task the sad genius--steady slave the while--

To further--say, the patriotic aim?

No, there 's deterioration manifest

Year by year, play by play! survey them all,

From that boy's-triumph when 'Acharnes' dawned,

To 'Thesmophoriazousai,'--this man's-shame!

There, truly, patriot zeal so prominent

Allowed friends' plea perhaps: the baser stuff

Was but the nobler spirit's vehicle.

Who would imprison, unvolatilize

A violet's perfume, blends with fatty oils

Essence too fugitive in flower alone;

So, calling unguent--violet, call the play--

Obscenity impregnated with 'Peace'!

But here 's the boy grown bald, and here 's the play

With twenty years' experience: where 's one spice

Of odor in the hogs'-lard? what pretends

To aught except a grease-pot's quality?

Friend, sophist-hating! know,--worst sophistry

Is when man's own soul plays its own self false,

Reasons a vice into a virtue, pleads

'I detail sin to shame its author'--not

'I shame Ariphrades for sin's display!'

'I show Opora to commend Sweet Home'--

Not 'I show Bacchis for the striplings' sake!'

"Yet all the same--O genius and O gold--

Had genius ne'er diverted gold from use

Worthy the temple, to do copper's work

And coat a swine's trough--which abundantly

Might furnish Phoibos' tripod, Pallas' throne!

Had you, I dream, discarding all the base,

The brutish, spurned alone convention's watch

And ward against invading decency

Disguised as license, law in lawlessness,

And so, re-ordinating outworn rule,

Made Comedy and Tragedy combine,

Prove some new Both-yet-neither, all one bard,

Euripides with Aristophanes

Co-operant! this, reproducing Now

As that gave Then existence: Life to-day,

This, as that other--Life dead long ago!

The mob decrees such feat no crown, perchance,

But--why call crowning the reward of quest?

Tell him, my other poet,--where thou walk'st

Some rarer world than e'er Ilissos washed!

"But dream goes idly in the air. To earth!

Earth's question just amounts to--which succeeds,

Which fails of two life-long antagonists?

Suppose my charges all mistake! assume

Your end, despite ambiguous means, the best--

The only! you and he, a patriot-pair,

Have striven alike for one result--say, Peace!

You spoke your best straight to the arbiters--

Our people: have you made them end this war

By dint of laughter and abuse and lies

And postures of Opora? Sadly--No!

This war, despite your twenty-five years' work,

May yet endure until Athenai falls,

And freedom falls with her. So much for you!

Now, the antagonist Euripides--

Has he succeeded better? Who shall say?

He spoke quite o'er the heads of Kleon's crowd

To a dim future, and if there he fail,

Why, you are fellows in adversity.

But that 's unlike the fate of wise words launched

By music on their voyage. Hail, Depart,

Arrive, Glad Welcome! Not my single wish--

Yours also wafts the white sail on its way,

Your nature too is kingly. All beside

I call pretension,--no true potentate,

Whatever intermediary be crowned,

Zeus or Poseidon, where the vulgar sky

Lacks not Triballos to complete the group.

I recognize--behind such phantom-crew--

Necessity, Creation, Poet's Power,

Else never had I dared approach, appeal

To poetry, power, Aristophanes!

But I trust truth's inherent kingliness,

Trust who, by reason of much truth, shall reign

More or less royally--may prayer but push

His sway past limit, purge the false from true!

Nor, even so, had boldness nerved my tongue

But that the other king stands suddenly,

In all the grand investiture of death,

Bowing your knee beside my lowly head--

Equals one moment!

"Now, arise and go!

Both have done homage to Euripides!"

Silence pursued the words: till he broke out--

"Scarce so! This constitutes, I may believe,

Sufficient homage done by who defames

Your poet's foe, since you account me such;

But homage-proper,--pay it by defence

Of him, direct defence and not oblique,

Not by mere mild admonishment of me!"

"Defence? The best, the only!" I replied.

"A story goes--When Sophokles, last year,

Cited before tribunal by his son

(A poet--to complete the parallel),

Was certified unsound of intellect,

And claimed as only fit for tutelage,

Since old and doting and incompetent

To carry on this world's work,--the defence

Consisted just in his reciting (calm

As the verse bore, which sets our heart a-swell

And voice a-heaving too tempestuously)

That choros-chant 'The station of the steed,

Stranger! thou comest to,--Kolonos white!'

Then he looked round and all revolt was dead.

You know the one adventure of my life--

What made Euripides Balaustion's friend.

When I last saw him, as he bade farewell,

'I sang another "Herakles,"' smiled he;

'It gained no prize: your love be prize I gain!

Take it--the tablets also where I traced

The story first with stulos pendent still--

Nay, the psalterion may complete the gift,

So, should you croon the ode bewailing Age,

Yourself shall modulate--same notes, same strings--

With the old friend who loved Balaustion once.'

There they lie! When you broke our solitude,

We were about to honor him once more

By reading the consummate Tragedy.

Night is advanced; I have small mind to sleep;

May I go on, and read,--so make defence,

So test true godship? You affirm, not I,

--Beating the god, affords such test: _I_ hold

That when rash hands but touch divinity,

The chains drop off, the prison-walls dispart,

And--fire--he fronts mad Pentheus! Dare we try?"

Accordingly I read the perfect piece.

HERAKLES

_Amphitruon._ Zeus' Couchmate,--who of mortals knows not me,

Argive Amphitruon whom Alkaios sired

Of old, as Perseus him, I--Herakles?

My home, this Thebai where the earth-born spike

Of Sown-ones burgeoned: Ares saved from these

A handful of their seed that stocks to-day

With children's children Thebai, Kadmos built.

Of these had Kreon birth, Menoikeus' child,

King of the country,--Kreon that became

The father of this woman, Megara,

Whom, when time was, Kadmeians one and all

Pealed praise to, marriage-songs with fluted help,

While to my dwelling that grand Herakles

Bore her, his bride. But, leaving Thebes--where I

Abode perforce--this Megara and those

Her kinsmen, the desire possessed my son

Rather to dwell in Argos, that walled work,

Kuklopian city, which I fly, myself,

Because I slew Elektruon. Seeking so

To ease away my hardships and once more

Inhabit his own land, for my return

Heavy the price he pays Eurustheus there--

The letting in of light on this choked world!

Either he promised, vanquished by the goad

Of Heré, or because fate willed it thus.

The other labors--why, he toiled them through;

But for this last one--down by Tainaros,

Its mouth, to Haides' realm descended he

To drag into the light the three-shaped hound

Of Hell: whence Herakles returns no more.

Now, there 's an old-world tale, Kadmeians have,

How Dirké's husband was a Lukos once,

Holding the seven-towered city here in sway

Before they ruled the land, white-steeded pair,

The twins Amphion, Zethos, born to Zeus.

This Lukos' son,--named like his father too,

No born Kadmeian but Euboia's gift,--

Comes and kills Kreon, lords it o'er the land,

Falling upon our town sedition-sick.

To us, akin to Kreon, just that bond

Becomes the worst of evils, seemingly;

For, since my son in the earth's abysms,

This man of valor, Lukos, lord and king,

Seeks now to slay these sons of Herakles,

And slay his wife as well,--by murder thus

Thinking to stamp out murder,--slay too me,

(If me 't is fit you count among men still,--

Useless old age,) and all for fear lest these,

Grown men one day, exact due punishment

Of bloodshed and their mother's father's fate.

I therefore, since he leaves me in these domes,

The children's household guardian,--left, when earth's

Dark dread he underwent, that son of mine,--

I, with their mother, lest his boys should die,

Sit at this altar of the savior Zeus

Which, glory of triumphant spear, he raised

Conquering--my nobly-born!--the Minuai.

Here do we guard our station, destitute

Of all things, drink, food, raiment, on bare ground

Couched side by side: sealed out of house and home

Sit we in a resourcelessness of help.

Our friends--why, some are no true friends, I see!

The rest, that are true, want the means to aid.

So operates in man adversity:

Whereof may never anybody--no,

Though half of him should really wish me well,--

Happen to taste! a friend-test faultless, that!

_Megara._ Old man, who erst did raze the Taphian town,

Illustriously, the army-leader, thou,

Of speared Kadmeians--how gods play men false!

I, now, missed nowise fortune in my sire,

Who, for his wealth, was boasted mighty once,

Having supreme rule,--for the love of which

Leap the long lances forth at favored breasts,--

And having children too: and me he gave

Thy son, his house with that of Herakles

Uniting by the far-famed marriage-bed.

And now these things are dead and flown away.

While thou and I await our death, old man,

These Herakleian boys too, whom--my chicks--

I save beneath my wings like brooding bird.

But one or other falls to questioning.

"O mother," cries he, "where in all the world

Is father gone to? What 's he doing? when

Will he come back?" At fault through tender years,

They seek their sire. For me, I put them off,

Telling them stories; at each creak of doors,

All wonder "Does he come?"--and all a-foot

Make for the fall before the parent knee.

Now then, what hope, what method of escape

Facilitatest thou?--for, thee, old man,

I look to,--since we may not leave by stealth

The limits of the land, and guards, more strong

Than we, are at the outlets: nor in friends

Remain to us the hopes of safety more.

Therefore, whatever thy decision be.

Impart it for the common good of all!

Lest now should prove the proper time to die,

Though, being weak, we spin it out and live.

_Amph._ Daughter, it scarce is easy, do one's best,

To blurt out counsel, things at such a pass.

_Meg._ You want some sorrow more, or so love life?

_Amph._ I both enjoy life, and love hopes beside.

_Meg._ And I; but hope against hope--no, old man!

_Amph._ In these delayings of an ill lurks cure.

_Meg._ But bitter is the meantime, and it bites.

_Amph._ Oh, there may be a run before the wind

From out these present ills, for me and thee,

Daughter, and yet may come my son, thy spouse!

But hush! and from the children take away

Their founts aflow with tears, and talk them calm,

Steal them by stories--sad theft, all the same!

For, human troubles--they grow weary too;

Neither the wind-blasts always have their strength,

Nor happy men keep happy to the end:

Since all things change--their natures part in twain;

And that man's bravest therefore, who hopes on,

Hopes ever: to despair is coward-like.

_Choros._ These domes that overroof,

This long-used couch, I come to, having made

A staff my prop, that song may put to proof

The swan-like power, age-whitened,--poet's aid

Of sobbed-forth dirges--words that stand aloof

From action now: such am I--just a shade

With night for all its face, a mere night-dream--

And words that tremble too: howe'er they seem,

Devoted words, I deem.

O of a father ye unfathered ones,

O thou old man, and thou whose groaning stuns--

Unhappy mother--only us above,

Nor reaches him below in Haides' realm, thy love!

--(Faint not too soon, urge forward foot and limb

Way-weary, nor lose courage--as some horse

Yoked to the car whose weight recoils on him

Just at the rock-ridge that concludes his course!

Take by the hand, the peplos, any one

Whose foothold fails him, printless and fordone!

Aged, assist along me aged too,

Who,--mate with thee in toils when life was new,

And shields and spears first made acquaintanceship,--

Stood by thyself and proved no bastard-slip

Of fatherland when loftiest glory grew.)--

See now, how like the sire's

Each eyeball fiercely fires!

What though ill-fortune have not left his race?

Neither is gone the grand paternal grace!

Hellas! O what--what combatants, destroyed

In these, wilt thou one day seek--seek, and find all void!

Pause! for I see the ruler of this land,

Lukos, now passing through the palace-gate.

_Lukos._ The Herakleian couple--father, wife--

If needs I must, I question: "must" forsooth?

Being your master--all I please, I ask.

To what time do you seek to spin out life?

What hope, what help see, so as not to die?

Is it you trust the sire of these, that 's sunk

In Haides, will return? How past the pitch,

Suppose you have to die, you pile the woe--

Thou, casting, Hellas through, thy empty vaunts

As though Zeus helped thee to a god for son;

And thou, that thou wast styled our best man's wife!

Where was the awful in his work wound up,

If he did quell and quench the marshy snake

Or the Nemeian monster whom he snared

And--says, by throttlings of his arm, he slew?

With these do you outwrestle me? Such feats

Shall save from death the sons of Herakles

Who got praise, being naught, for bravery

In wild-beast-battle, otherwise a blank?

No man to throw on left arm buckler's weight,

Not he, nor get in spear's reach! bow he bore--

True coward's-weapon: shoot first and then fly!

No bow-and-arrow proves a man is brave,

But who keeps rank,--stands, one unwinking stare

As, ploughing up, the darts come,--brave is he.

My action has no impudence, old man!

Providence, rather: for I own I slew

Kreon, this woman's sire, and have his seat.

Nowise I wish, then, to leave, these grown up,

Avengers on me, payment for my deeds.

_Amph._ As to the part of Zeus in his own child,

Let Zeus defend that! As to mine, 't is me

The care concerns to show by argument

The folly of this fellow,--Herakles,

Whom I stand up for! since to hear thee styled--

Cowardly--that is unendurable.

First then, the infamous (for I account

Amongst the words denied to human speech,

Timidity ascribed thee, Herakles!)

This I must put from thee, with gods in proof.

Zeus' thunder I appeal to, those four steeds

Whereof he also was the charioteer

When, having shut down the earth's Giant-growth--

(Never shaft flew but found and fitted flank)--

Triumph he sang in common with the gods.

The Kentaur-race, four-footed insolence--

Go ask at Pholoé, vilest thou of kings,

_Whom_ they would pick out and pronounce best man,

If not my son, "the seeming-brave," say'st thou!

But Dirphus, thy Abantid mother-town,

Question her, and she would not praise, I think!

For there 's no spot, where having done some good,

Thy country thou might'st call to witness worth.

Now, that allwise invention, archer's-gear,

Thou blamest: hear my teaching and grow sage!

A man in armor is his armor's slave,

And, mixed with rank and file that want to run,

He dies because his neighbors have lost heart.

Then, should he break his spear, no way remains

Of warding death off,--gone that body-guard,

His one and only; while, whatever folk

Have the true bow-hand,--here 's the one main good,--

Though he have sent ten thousand shafts abroad,

Others remain wherewith the archer saves

His limbs and life, too,--stands afar and wards

Away from flesh the foe that vainly stares

Hurt by the viewless arrow, while himself

Offers no full front to those opposite,

But keeps in thorough cover: there 's the point

That 's capital in combat--damage foe,

Yet keep a safe skin--foe not out of reach

As you are! Thus my words contrast with thine,

And such, in judging facts, our difference.

These children, now, why dost thou seek to slay?

What have they done thee? In a single point

I count thee wise--if, being base thyself,

Thou dread'st the progeny of nobleness.

Yet this bears hard upon us, all the same,

If we must die--because of fear in thee--

A death 't were fit thou suffer at our hands,

Thy betters, did Zeus rightly judge us all.

If therefore thou art bent on sceptre-sway,

Thyself, here--suffer us to leave the land,

Fugitives! nothing do by violence,

Or violence thyself shalt undergo

When the gods' gale may chance to change for thee!

Alas, O land of Kadmos,--for 't is thee

I mean to close with, dealing out the due

Revilement,--in such sort dost thou defend

Herakles and his children? Herakles

Who, coming, one to all the world, against

The Minuai, fought them and left Thebes an eye

Unblinded henceforth to front freedom with!

Neither do I praise Hellas, nor shall brook

Ever to keep in silence that I count

Towards my son, craven of cravens--her

Whom it behooved go bring the young ones here

Fire, spears, arms--in exchange for seas made safe,

And cleansings of the land, his labor's price.

But fire, spears, arms,--O children, neither Thebes

Nor Hellas has them for you! 'T is myself,

A feeble friend, ye look to: nothing now

But a tongue's murmur, for the strength is gone

We had once, and with age are limbs a-shake

And force a-flicker! Were I only young,

Still with the mastery o'er bone and thew,

Grasping first spear that came, the yellow locks

Of this insulter would I bloody so--

Should send him skipping o'er the Atlantic bounds

Out of my arm's reach through poltroonery!

_Cho._ Have not the really good folk starting-points

For speech to purpose,--though rare talkers they?

_Luk._ Say thou against us words thou towerest with!

I, for thy words, will deal thee blows, their due.

Go, some to Helikon, to Parnasos

Some, and the clefts there! Bid the woodmen fell

Oak-trunks, and, when the same are brought inside

The city, pile the altar round with logs,

Then fire it, burn the bodies of them all,

That they may learn thereby, no dead man rules

The land here, but 't is I, by acts like these!

As for you, old sirs, who are set against

My judgments, you shall groan for--not alone

The Herakleian children, but the fate

Of your own house beside, when faring ill

By any chance: and you shall recollect

Slaves are you of a tyranny that 's mine!

_Cho._ O progeny of earth,--whom Ares sowed

When he laid waste the dragon's greedy jaw--

Will ye not lift the staves, right-hand supports,

And bloody this man's irreligious head?

Who, being no Kadmeian, rules,--the wretch,--

Our easy youth: an interloper too!

But not of me, at least, shalt thou enjoy

Thy lordship ever; nor my labor's fruit--

Hand worked so hard for--have! A curse with thee,

Whence thou didst come, there go and tyrannize!

For never while I live shalt thou destroy

The Herakleian children: not so deep

Hides he below ground, leaving thee their lord!

But we bear both of you in mind,--that thou,

The land's destroyer, dost possess the land,

While he who saved it, loses every right.

_I_ play the busybody--for I serve

My dead friends when they need friends' service most?

O right-hand, how thou yearnest to snatch spear

And serve indeed! in weakness dies the wish,

Or I had stayed thee calling me a slave,

And nobly drawn my breath at home in Thebes

Where thou exultest!--city that's insane,

Sick through sedition and bad government,

Else never had she gained for master--thee!

_Meg._ Old friends, I praise you: since a righteous wrath

For friend's sake well becomes a friend. But no!

On our account in anger with your lord,

Suffer no injury! Hear my advice,

Amphitruon, if I seem to speak aright.

Oh, yes, I love my children! how not love

What I brought forth, what toiled for? and to die--

Sad I esteem too; still, the fated way

Who stiffens him against, that man I count

Poor creature; us, who are of other mood,

Since we must die, behooves us meet our death

Not burnt to cinders, giving foes the laugh--

To me, worse ill than dying, that! we owe

Our houses many a brave deed, now to pay.

Thee, indeed, gloriously men estimate

For spear-work, so that unendurable

Were it that thou shouldst die a death of shame.

And for my glorious husband, where wants he

A witness that he would not save his boys

If touched in their good fame thereby? since birth

Bears ill with baseness done for children's sake,

My husband needs must be my pattern here.

See now thy hope--how much I count thereon!

Thou thinkest that thy son will come to light:

And, of the dead, who came from Haides back?

But we with talk this man might mollify:

Never! Of all foes, fly the foolish one!

Wise, well-bred people, make concession to!

Sooner you meet respect by speaking soft.

Already it was in my mind--perchance

We might beg off these children's banishment;

But even that is sad, involving them

In safety, ay--and piteous poverty!

Since the host's visage for the flying friend

Has, only one day, the sweet look, 'tis said.

Dare with us death, which waits thee, dared or no!

We call on thine ancestral worth, old man!

For who out-labors what the gods appoint

Shows energy, but energy gone mad.

Since what must--none e'er makes what must not be!

_Cho._ Had any one, while yet my arms were strong,

Been scorning thee, he easily had ceased.

But we are naught, now; thine henceforth to see--

Amphitruon, how to push aside these fates!

_Amph._ Nor cowardice nor a desire of life

Stops me from dying: but I seek to save

My son his children. Vain! I set my heart,

It seems, upon impossibility.

See, it is ready for the sword, this throat

To pierce, divide, dash down from precipice!

But one grace grant us, king, we supplicate!

Slay me and this unhappy one before

The children, lest we see them--impious sight!--

Gasping the soul forth, calling all the while

On mother and on father's father! Else,

Do as thy heart inclines thee! No resource

Have we from death, and we resign ourselves.

_Meg._ And I too supplicate: add grace to grace,

And, though but one man, doubly serve us both!

Let me bestow adornment of the dead

Upon these children! Throw the palace wide!

For now we are shut out. Thence these shall share

At least so much of wealth was once their sire's!

_Luk._ These things shall be. Withdraw the bolts, I bid

My servants! Enter and adorn yourselves!

I grudge no peploi; but when these ye wind

About your bodies,--that adornment done,--

Then I shall come and give you to the grave.

_Meg._ O children, follow this unhappy foot,

Your mother's, into your ancestral home,

Where others have the power, are lords in truth,

Although the empty name is left us yet!

_Amph._ O Zeus, in vain I had thee marriage-mate,

In vain I called thee father of my child!

Thou wast less friendly far than thou didst seem.

I, the mere man, o'ermatch in virtue thee

The mighty god: for I have not betrayed

The Herakleian children,--whereas thou

Hadst wit enough to come clandestinely

Into the chamber, take what no man gave,

Another's place; and when it comes to help

Thy loved ones, there thou lackest wit indeed!

Thou art some stupid god or born unjust.

_Cho._ Even a dirge, can Phoibos suit

In song to music jubilant

For all its sorrow: making shoot

His golden plectron o'er the lute,

Melodious ministrant.

And I, too, am of mind to raise,

Despite the imminence of doom,

A song of joy, outpour my praise

To him--what is it rumor says?--

Whether--now buried in the ghostly gloom

Below ground--he was child of Zeus indeed,

Or mere Amphitruon's mortal seed--

To him I weave the wreath of song, his labor's meed.

For, is my hero perished in the feat?

The virtues of brave toils, in death complete,

These save the dead in song,--their glory-garland meet!

First, then, he made the wood

Of Zeus a solitude,

Slaying its lion-tenant; and he spread

The tawniness behind--his yellow head

Enmuffled by the brute's, backed by that grin of dread.

The mountain-roving savage Kentaur-race

He strewed with deadly bow about their place,

Slaying with wingèd shafts: Peneios knew,

Beauteously-eddying, and the long tracts too

Of pasture trampled fruitless, and as well

Those desolated haunts Mount Pelion under,

And, grassy up to Homolé, each dell

Whence, having filled their hands with pine-tree plunder,

Horse-like was wont to prance from, and subdue

The land of Thessaly, that bestial crew.

The golden-headed spot-back'd stag he slew,

That robber of the rustics: glorified

Therewith the goddess who in hunter's pride

Slaughters the game along Oinoé's side.

And, yoked abreast, he brought the chariot-breed

To pace submissive to the bit, each steed

That in the bloody cribs of Diomede

Champed and, unbridled, hurried down that gore

For grain, exultant the dread feast before--

Of man's flesh: hideous feeders they of yore!

All as he crossed the Hebros' silver-flow

Accomplished he such labor, toiling so

For Mukenaian tyrant; ay, and more--

He crossed the Melian shore

And, by the sources of Amauros, shot

To death that strangers'-pest

Kuknos, who dwelt in Amphanaia: not

Of fame for good to guest!

And next, to the melodious maids he came,

Inside the Hesperian court-yard: hand must aim

At plucking gold fruit from the appled leaves,

Now he had killed the dragon, backed like flame,

Who guards the unapproachable he weaves

Himself all round, one spire about the same.

And into those sea-troughs of ocean dived

The hero, and for mortals calm contrived,

Whatever oars should follow in his wake.

And under heaven's mid-seat his hands thrust he,

At home with Atlas: and, for valor's sake,

Held the gods up their star-faced mansionry.

Also, the rider-host of Amazons

About Maiotis many-streamed, he went

To conquer through the billowy Euxin once,

Having collected what an armament

Of friends from Hellas, all on conquest bent

Of that gold-garnished cloak, dread girdle-chase!

So Hellas gained the girl's barbarian grace

And at Mukenai saves the trophy still--

Go wonder there, who will!

And the ten-thousand-headed hound

Of many a murder, the Lernaian snake

He burned out, head by head, and cast around

His darts a poison thence,--darts soon to slake

Their rage in that three-bodied herdsman's gore

Of Erutheia. Many a running more

He made for triumph and felicity,

And, last of toils, to Haides, never dry

Of tears, he sailed: and there he, luckless, ends

His life completely, nor returns again.

The house and home are desolate of friends,

And where the children's life-path leads them, plain

I see,--no step retraceable, no god

Availing, and no law to help the lost!

The oar of Charon marks their period,

Waits to end all. Thy hands, these roofs accost!--

To thee, though absent, look their uttermost!

But if in youth and strength I flourished still,

Still shook the spear in fight, did power match will

In these Kadmeian co-mates of my age,

They would,--and I,--when warfare was to wage,

Stand by these children; but I am bereft

Of youth now, lone of that good genius left!

But hist, desist! for here come these,--

Draped as the dead go, under and over,--

Children long since--now hard to discover--

Of the once so potent Herakles!

And the loved wife dragging, in one tether

About her feet, the boys together;

And the hero's aged sire comes last!

Unhappy that I am! Of tears which rise,--

How am I all unable to hold fast,

Longer, the aged fountains of these eyes!

_Meg._ Be it so! Who is priest, who butcher here

Of these ill-fated ones, or stops the breath

Of me, the miserable? Ready, see,

The sacrifice--to lead where Haides lives!

O children, we are led--no lovely team

Of corpses--age, youth, motherhood, all mixed!

O sad fate of myself and these my sons

Whom with these eyes I look at, this last time!

I, indeed, bore you: but for enemies

I brought you up to be a laughing-stock,

Matter for merriment, destruction-stuff!

Woe's me!

Strangely indeed my hopes have struck me down

From what I used to hope about you once--

The expectation from your father's talk!

For thee, now, thy dead sire dealt Argos to:

Thou wast to have Eurustheus' house one day,

And rule Pelasgia where the fine fruits grow;

And, for a stole of state, he wrapped about

Thy head with that the lion-monster bore,

That which himself went wearing armor-wise.

And thou wast King of Thebes--such chariots there!

Those plains I had for portion--all for thee,

As thou hadst coaxed them out of who gave birth

To thee, his boy: and into thy right hand

He thrust the guardian-club of Daidalos,--

Poor guardian proves the gift that plays thee false!

And upon thee he promised to bestow

Oichalia--what, with those far-shooting shafts,

He ravaged once; and so, since three you were,

With threefold kingdoms did he build you up

To very towers, your father,--proud enough,

Prognosticating, from your manliness

In boyhood, what the manhood's self would be.

For my part, I was picking out for you

Brides, suiting each with his alliance--this

From Athens, this from Sparté, this from Thebes--

Whence, suited--as stern-cables steady ship--

You might have hold on life gods bless. All gone!

Fortune turns round and gives us--you, the Fates

Instead of brides--me, tears for nuptial baths,

Unhappy in my hoping! And the sire

Of your sire--he prepares the marriage-feast

Befitting Haides who plays father now--

Bitter relationship! Oh me! which first--

Which last of you shall I to bosom fold?

To whom shall I fit close, his mouth to mine?

Of whom shall I lay hold and ne'er let go?

How would I gather, like the brown-winged bee,

The groans from all, and, gathered into one,

Give them you back again, a crowded tear!

Dearest, if any voice be heard of men

Dungeoned in Haides, thee--to thee I speak!

Here is thy father dying, and thy boys!

And I too perish, famed as fortunate

By mortals once, through thee! Assist them! Come!

But come! though just a shade, appear to me!

For, coming, thy ghost-grandeur would suffice,

Such cowards are they in thy presence, these

Who kill thy children now thy back is turned!

_Amph._ Ay, daughter, bid the powers below assist!

But I will rather, raising hand to heaven,

Call thee to help, O Zeus, if thy intent

Be, to these children, helpful anyway,

Since soon thou wilt be valueless enough!

And yet thou hast been called and called; in vain

I labor: for we needs must die, it seems.

Well, aged brothers--life's a little thing!

Such as it is, then, pass life pleasantly

From day to night, nor once grieve all the while!

Since Time concerns him not about our hopes,--

To save them,--but his own work done, flies off.

Witness myself, looked up to among men,

Doing noteworthy deeds: when here comes fate

Lifts me away, like feather skyward borne,

In one day! Riches then and glory,--whom

These are found constant to, I know not. Friends,

Farewell! the man who loved you all so much,

Now, this last time, my mates, ye look upon!

_Meg._ Ha!

O father, do I see my dearest? Speak!

_Amph._ No more than thou canst, daughter--dumb like thee!

_Meg._ Is this he whom we heard was under ground?

_Amph._ Unless at least some dream in day we see!

_Meg._ What do I say? what dreams insanely view?

This is no other than thy son, old sire!

Here, children! hang to these paternal robes,

Quick, haste, hold hard on him, since here's your true

Zeus that can save--and every whit as well!

_Herakles._ Oh, hail, my palace, my hearth's propula,--

How glad I see thee as I come to light!

Ha, what means this? My children I behold

Before the house in garments of the grave,

Chapleted, and, amid a crowd of men,

My very wife--my father weeping too,

Whatever the misfortune! Come, best take

My station nearer these and learn it all!

Wife, what new sorrow has approached our home?

_Meg._ O dearest! light flashed on thy father now!

Art thou come? art thou saved and dost thou fall

On friends in their supreme extremity?

_Her._ How say'st thou? Father! what's the trouble here?

_Meg._ Undone are we!--but thou, old man, forgive

If first I snatch what thou shouldst say to him!

For somehow womanhood wakes pity more.

Here are my children killed and I undone!

_Her._ Apollon, with what preludes speech begins!

_Meg._ Dead are my brothers and old father too.

_Her._ How say'st thou?--doing what?--by spear-stroke whence?

_Meg._ Lukos destroyed them--the land's noble king!

_Her._ Met them in arms? or through the land's disease?

_Meg._ Sedition: and he sways seven-gated Thebes.

_Her._ Why then came fear on the old man and thee?

_Meg._ He meant to kill thy father, me, our boys.

_Her._ How say'st thou? Fearing what from orphanage?

_Meg._ Lest they should some day pay back Kreon's death.

_Her._ And why trick out the boys corpse-fashion thus?

_Meg._ These wraps of death we have already donned.

_Her._ And you had died through violence? Woe's me!

_Meg._ Left bare of friends: and thou wast dead, we heard.

_Her._ And whence came on you this faintheartedness?

_Meg._ The heralds of Eurustheus brought the news.

_Her._ And why was it you left my house and hearth?

_Meg._ Forced thence: thy father--from his very couch!

_Her._ And no shame at insulting the old man?

_Meg._ Shame, truly! no near neighbors _he_ and Shame!

_Her._ And so much, in my absence, lacked I friends?

_Meg._ Friends,--are there any to a luckless man?

_Her._ The Minuai-war I waged,--they spat forth these?

_Meg._ Friendless--again I tell thee--is ill-luck.

_Her._ Will not you cast these hell-wraps from your hair

And look on light again, and with your eyes

Taste the sweet change from nether dark to day?

While I--for now there needs my handiwork--

First I shall go, demolish the abodes

Of these new lordships; next hew off the head

Accurst and toss it for the dogs to trail.

Then, such of the Kadmeians as I find

Were craven though they owed me gratitude,--

Some I intend to handle with this club

Renowned for conquest; and with wingèd shafts

Scatter the others, fill Ismenos full

With bloody corpses,--Dirké's flow so white

Shall be incarnadined. For, whom, I pray,

Behooves me rather help than wife and child

And aged father? Farewell, "Labors" mine!

Vainly I wrought them: my true work lay here!

My business is to die defending these,--

If for their father's sake they meant to die.

Or how shall we call brave the battling it

With snake and lion, as Eurustheus bade,

If yet I must not labor death away

From my own children? "Conquering Herakles"

Folk will not call me as they used, I think!

The right thing is for parents to assist

Children, old age, the partner of the couch.

_Amph._ True, son! thy duty is--be friend to friends

And foe to foes: yet--no more haste than needs!

_Her._ Why, father, what is over-hasty here?

_Amph._ Many a pauper--seeming to be rich,

As the word goes--the king calls partisan.

Such made a riot, ruined Thebes to rob

Their neighbor: for, what good they had at home

Was spent and gone,--flew off through idleness.

You came to trouble Thebes, they saw: since seen,

Beware lest, raising foes, a multitude,

You stumble where you apprehend no harm.

_Her._ If all Thebes saw me, not a whit care I.

But seeing as I did a certain bird

Not in the lucky seats, I knew some woe

Was fallen upon the house: so, purposely,

By stealth I made my way into the land.

_Amph._ And now, advancing, hail the hearth with praise

And give the ancestral home thine eye to see!

For he himself will come, thy wife and sons

The drag-forth--slaughter--slay me too,--this king!

But, here remaining, all succeeds with thee--

Gain lost by no false step. So, this thy town

Disturb not, son, ere thou right matters here!

_Her._ Thus will I do, for thou say'st well; my home

Let me first enter! Since at the due time

Returning from the unsunned depths where dwells

Haides' wife Koré, let me not affront

Those gods beneath my roof, I first should hail!

_Amph._ For didst thou really visit Haides, son?

_Her._ Ay--dragged to light, too, his three-headed beast.

_Amph._ By fight didst conquer--or through Koré's gift?

_Her._ Fight: well for me, I saw the Orgies first!

_Amph._ And is he in Eurustheus' house, the brute?

_Her._ Chthonia's grove, Hermion's city, holds him now.

_Amph._ Does not Eurustheus know thee back on earth?

_Her._ No: I would come first and see matters here.

_Amph._ But how wast thou below ground such a time?

_Her._ I stopped, from Haides, bringing Theseus up.

_Amph._ And where is he?--bound o'er the plain for home?

_Her._ Gone glad to Athens--Haides' fugitive!

But, up, boys! follow father into house!

There's a far better going-in for you

Truly, than going-out was! Nay, take heart,

And let the eyes no longer run and run!

And thou, O wife, my own, collect thy soul

Nor tremble now! Leave grasping, all of you,

My garments! I'm not winged, nor fly from friends!

Ah,--

No letting go for these, who all the more

Hang to my garments! Did you foot indeed

The razor's edge? Why, then I'll carry them--

Take with my hands these small craft up, and tow

Just as a ship would. There! don't fear I shirk

My children's service! this way, men are men,

No difference! best and worst, they love their boys

After one fashion: wealth they differ in--

Some have it, others not; but each and all

Combine to form the children-loving race.

_Cho._ Youth is a pleasant burden to me;

But age on my head, more heavily

Than the crags of Aitna, weighs and weighs,

And darkening cloaks the lids and intercepts the rays.

Never be mine the preference

Of an Asian empire's wealth, nor yet

Of a house all gold, to youth, to youth

That's beauty, whatever the gods dispense!

Whether in wealth we joy, or fret

Paupers,--of all God's gifts most beautiful, in truth!

But miserable murderous age I hate!

Let it go to wreck, the waves adown,

Nor ever by rights plague tower or town

Where mortals bide, but still elate

With wings, on ether, precipitate,

Wander them round--nor wait!

But if the gods, to man's degree,

Had wit and wisdom, they would bring

Mankind a twofold youth, to be

Their virtue's sign-mark, all should see,

In those with whom life's winter thus grew spring.

For when they died, into the sun once more

Would they have traversed twice life's race-course o'er;

While ignobility had simply run

Existence through, nor second life begun,

And so might we discern both bad and good

As surely as the starry multitude

Is numbered by the sailors, one and one.

But now the gods by no apparent line

Limit the worthy and the base define;

Only, a certain period rounds, and so

Brings man more wealth,--but youthful vigor, no!

Well! I am not to pause

Mingling together--wine and wine in cup--

The Graces with the Muses up--

Most dulcet marriage: loosed from music's laws,

No life for me!

But where the wreaths abound, there ever may I be!

And still, an aged bard, I shout Mnemosuné--

Still chant of Herakles the triumph-chant,

Companioned by the seven-stringed tortoise-shell

And Libuan flute, and Bromios' self as well,

God of the grape, with man participant!

Not yet will we arrest their glad advance--

The Muses who so long have led me forth to dance!

A paian--hymn the Delian girls indeed,

Weaving a beauteous measure in and out

His temple-gates, Latona's goodly seed;

And paians--I too, these thy domes about,

From these gray cheeks, my king, will swan-like shout--

Old songster! Ay, in song it starts off brave--

"Zeus' son is he!" and yet, such grace of birth

Surpassing far, to man his labors gave

Existence, one calm flow without a wave,

Having destroyed the beasts, the terrors of the earth.

_Luk._ From out the house Amphitruon comes--in time!

For 'tis a long while now since ye bedecked

Your bodies with the dead-folks' finery.

But quick! the boys and wife of Herakles--

Bid them appear outside this house, keep pact

To die, and need no bidding but your own!

_Amph._ King! you press hard on me sore-pressed enough,

And give me scorn--beside my dead ones here.

Meet in such matters were it, though you reign,

To temper zeal with moderation. Since

You do impose on us the need to die--

Needs must we love our lot, obey your will.

_Luk._ Where's Megara, then? Alkmené's grandsons, where?

_Amph._ She, I think,--as one figures from outside,--

_Luk._ Well, this same thinking,--what affords its ground?

_Amph._ --Sits suppliant on the holy altar-steps,--

_Luk._ Idly indeed a suppliant to save life!

_Amph._ --And calls on her dead husband, vainly too!

_Luk._ For he's not come, nor ever will arrive.

_Amph._ Never--at least, if no god raise him up.

_Luk._ Go to her, and conduct her from the house!

_Amph._ I should partake the murder, doing that.

_Luk._ We,--since thou hast a scruple in the case,--

Outside of fears, we shall march forth these lads,

Mother and all. Here, follow me, my folk--

And gladly so remove what stops our toils!

_Amph._ Thou--go then! March where needs must! What remains--

Perhaps concerns another. Doing ill,

Expect some ill be done thee!

Ha, old friends!

On he strides beautifully! in the toils

O' the net, where swords spring forth, will he be fast--

Minded to kill his neighbors--the arch-knave!

I go, too--I must see the falling corpse!

For he has sweets to give--a dying man,

Your foe, that pays the price of deeds he did.

_Cho._ Troubles are over! He the great king once,

Turns the point, tends for Haides, goal of life!

O justice, and the gods' back-flowing fate!

_Amph._ Thou art come, late indeed, where death pays crime--

These insults heaped on better than thyself!

_Cho._ Joy gives this outburst to my tears! Again

Come round those deeds, his doing, which of old

He never dreamed himself was to endure--

King of the country! But enough, old man!

Indoors, now, let us see how matters stand--

If somebody be faring as I wish!

_Luk._ Ah me--me!

_Cho._ This strikes the keynote--music to my mind,

Merry i' the household! Death takes up the tune!

The king gives voice, groans murder's prelude well!

_Luk._ O all the land of Kadmos! slain by guile!

_Cho._ Ay, for who slew first? Paying back thy due,

Resign thee! make, for deeds done, mere amends!

Who was it grazed the gods through lawlessness--

Mortal himself, threw up his fools'-conceit

Against the blessed heavenly ones--as though

Gods had no power? Old friends, the impious man

Exists not any more! The house is mute.

Turn we to song and dance! For, those I love,

Those I wish well to, well fare they, to wish!

Dances, dances and banqueting

To Thebes, the sacred city through,

Are a care! for, change and change

Of tears to laughter, old to new,

Our lays, glad birth, they bring, they bring!

He is gone and past, the mighty king!

And the old one reigns, returned--Oh, strange!

From the Acherontian harbor too!

Advent of hope, beyond thought's widest range!

To the gods, the gods, are crimes a care,

And they watch our virtue, well aware

That gold and that prosperity drive man

Out of his mind--those charioteers who hale

Might-without-right behind them: face who can

Fortune's reverse which time prepares, nor quail?

--He who evades law and in lawlessness

Delights him,--he has broken down his trust--

The chariot, riches haled--now blackening in the dust!

Ismenos, go thou garlanded!

Break into dance, ye ways, the polished bed

O' the seven-gated city! Dirké, thou

Fair-flowing, with the Asopiad sisters all,

Leave your sire's stream, attend the festival

Of Herakles, one choir of nymphs, sing triumph now!

O woody rock of Puthios and each home

O the Helikonian Muses, ye shall come

With joyous shouting to my walls, my town

Where saw the light that Spartan race, those "Sown,"

Brazen-shield-bearing chiefs, whereof the band

With children's children renovates our land,

To Thebes a sacred light!

O combination of the marriage rite--

Bed of the mortal-born and Zeus, who couched

Beside the nymph of Perseus' progeny!

For credible, past hope, becomes to me

That nuptial story long ago avouched,

O Zeus! and time has turned the dark to bright,

And made one blaze of truth the Herakleidan might--

His, who emerged from earth's pavilion, left

Plouton's abode, the nether palace-cleft,

Thou wast the lord that nature gave me--not

That baseness born and bred--my king, by lot!

--Baseness made plain to all, who now regard

The match of sword with sword in fight,--

If to the gods the Just and Right

Still pleasing be, still claim the palm's award.

Horror!

Are we come to the selfsame passion of fear,

Old friends?--such a phantasm fronts me here

Visible over the palace-roof!

In flight, in flight, the laggard limb

Bestir! and haste aloof

From that on the roof there--grand and grim!

O Paian, king!

Be thou my safeguard from the woeful thing!

_Iris._ Courage, old men! beholding here--Night's birth--

Madness, and me the handmaid of the gods,

Iris: since to your town we come, no plague--

Wage war against the house of but one man

From Zeus and from Alkmené sprung, they say.

Now, till he made an end of bitter toils,

Fate kept him safe, nor did his father Zeus

Let us once hurt him, Heré nor myself.

But, since he has toiled through Eurustheus' task,

Heré desires to fix fresh blood on him--

Slaying his children: I desire it too.

Up then, collecting the unsoftened heart,

Unwedded virgin of black Night! Drive, drag

Frenzy upon the man here--whirls of brain

Big with child-murder, while his feet leap gay!

Let go the bloody cable its whole length!

So that,--when o'er the Acherousian ford

He has sent floating, by self-homicide,

His beautiful boy-garland,--he may know

First, Heré's anger, what it is to him,

And then learn mine. The gods are vile indeed

And mortal matters vast, if he 'scape free!

_Madness._ Certes, from well-born sire and mother too

Had I my birth, whose blood is Night's and Heaven's;

But here's my glory,--not to grudge the good!

Nor love I raids against the friends of man.

I wish, then, to persuade,--before I see

You stumbling, you and Heré! trust my words!

This man, the house of whom ye hound me to,

Is not unfamed on earth nor gods among;

Since, having quelled waste land and savage sea,

He alone raised again the falling rights

Of gods--gone ruinous through impious men.

Desire no mighty mischief, I advise!

_Iris._ Give thou no thought to Heré's faulty schemes!

_Mad._ Changing her step from faulty to fault-free!

_Iris._ Not to be wise, did Zeus' wife send thee here!

_Mad._ Sun, thee I cite to witness--doing what I loathe to do!

But since indeed to Heré and thyself I must subserve.

And follow you quick, with a whiz, as the hounds a-hunt with the

huntsman,

--Go I will! and neither the sea, as it groans with its waves so

furiously,

Nor earthquake, no, nor the bolt of thunder gasping out heaven's

labor-throe,

Shall cover the ground as I, at a bound, rush into the bosom of

Herakles!

And home I scatter, and house I batter,

Having first of all made the children fall,--

And he who felled them is never to know

He gave birth to each child that received the blow,

Till the Madness, I am, have let him go!

Ha, behold, already he rocks his head--he is off from the

starting-place!

Not a word, as he rolls his frightful orbs, from their sockets

wrenched in the ghastly race!

And the breathings of him he tempers and times no more than a bull

in act to toss,

And hideously he bellows invoking the Keres, daughters of Tartaros.

Ay, and I soon will dance thee madder, and pipe thee quite out of

thy mind with fear!

So, up with the famous foot, thou Iris, march to Olumpos, leave me

here!

Me and mine, who now combine, in the dreadful shape no mortal sees,

And now are about to pass, from without, inside of the home of

Herakles!

_Cho._ Otototoi,--groan! Away is mown

Thy flower, Zeus' offspring, City!

Unhappy Hellas, who dost cast (the pity!)

Who worked thee all the good,

Away from thee,--destroyest in a mood

Of madness him, to death whom pipings dance!

There goes she, in her chariot--groans, her brood--

And gives her team the goad, as though adrift

For doom, Night's Gorgon, Madness, she whose glance

Turns man to marble! with what hissings lift

Their hundred heads the snakes, her head's inheritance!

Quick has the god changed fortune: through their sire

Quick will the children, that he saved, expire!

O miserable me! O Zeus! thy child--

Childless himself--soon vengeance, hunger-wild,

Craving for punishment, will lay how low--

Loaded with many a woe!

O palace-roofs! your courts about,

A measure begins all unrejoiced

By the tympanies and the thyrsos hoist

Of the Bromian revel-rout!

O ye domes! and the measure proceeds

For blood, not such as the cluster bleeds

Of the Dionusian pouring-out!

Break forth, fly, children! fatal this--

Fatal the lay that is piped, I wis!

Ay, for he hunts a children-chase--

Never shall Madness lead her revel

And leave no trace in the dwelling-place!

Ai ai, because of the evil!

Ai ai, the old man--how I groan

For the father, and not the father alone!

She who was nurse of his children,--small

Her gain that they ever were born at all!

See! See!

A whirlwind shakes hither and thither

The house--the roof falls in together!

Ha, ha! what dost thou, son of Zeus?

A trouble of Tartaros broke loose,

Such as once Pallas on the Titan thundered,

Thou sendest on thy domes, roof-shattered and wall-sundered!

_Messenger._ O bodies white with age!--

_Cho._ What cry, to me--

_What_, dost thou call with?

_Mes._ There 's a curse indoors!

_Cho._ I shall not bring a prophet: you suffice!

_Mes._ Dead are the children!

_Cho._ Ai ai!

_Mes._ Groan! for, groans

Suit well the subject! Dire the children's death,

Dire too the parent's hands that dealt the fate.

No one could tell worse woe than we have borne!

_Cho._ How dost thou that same curse--curse, cause for groan

The father's on the children, make appear?

Tell in what matter they were hurled from heaven

Against the house--these evils; and recount

The children's hapless fate, O Messenger!

_Mes._ The victims were before the hearth of Zeus

A household-expiation: since the king

O' the country, Herakles had killed and cast

From out the dwelling; and a beauteous choir

Of boys stood by his sire, too, and his wife.

And now the basket had been carried round

The altar in a circle, and we used

The consecrated speech. Alkmené's son--

Just as he was about, in his right hand,

To bear the torch, that he might dip into

The cleansing-water--came to a stand-still;

And, as their father yet delayed, his boys

Had their eyes on him. But he was himself

No longer: lost in rollings of the eyes;

Out-thrusting eyes--their very roots--like blood!

Froth he dropped down his bushy-bearded cheek,

And said--together with a madman's laugh--

"Father! why sacrifice, before I slay

Eurustheus? why have twice the lustral fire,

And double pains, when 't is permitted me

To end, with one good hand-sweep, matters here?

Then,--when I hither bring Eurustheus' head,--

Then for these just slain, wash hands once for all!

Now,--cast drink-offerings forth, throw baskets down!

Who gives me bow and arrows, who my club?

I go to that Mukenai! One must match

Crowbars and mattocks, so that--those sunk stones

The Kuklops squared with picks and plumb-line red.

I, with my bent steel, may o'ertumble town!"

Which said, he goes and--with no car to have--

Affirms he has one! mounts the chariot-board,

And strikes, as having really goad in hand!

And two ways laughed the servants--laugh with awe;

And one said, as each met the other's stare,

"Playing us boys' tricks? or is master mad?"

But up he climbs, and down along the roof,

And, dropping into the men's place, maintains

He 's come to Nisos city, when he 's come

Only inside his own house! then reclines

On floor, for couch, and, as arrived indeed,

Makes himself supper; goes through some brief stay,

Then says he 's traversing the forest-flats

Of Isthmos; thereupon lays body bare

Of bucklings, and begins a contest with

--No one! and is proclaimed the conqueror--

He by himself--having called out to hear

--Nobody! Then, if you will take his word,

Blaring against Eurustheus horribly,

He 's at Mukenai. But his father laid

Hold of the strong hand and addressed him thus:

"O son, what ails thee? Of what sort is this

Extravagance? Has not some murder-craze,

Bred of those corpses thou didst just dispatch,

Danced thee drunk?" But he,--taking him to crouch,

Eurustheus' sire, that apprehensive touched

His hand, a suppliant,--pushes him aside,

Gets ready quiver, and bends low against

His children--thinking them Eurustheus' boys

He means to slay. They, horrified with fear,

Rushed here and there,--this child, into the robes

O' the wretched mother,--this, beneath the shade

O' the column,--and this other, like a bird,

Cowered at the altar-foot. The mother shrieks,

"Parent--what dost thou?--kill thy children?" So

Shriek the old sire and crowd of servitors.

But he, outwinding him, as round about

The column ran the boy,--a horrid whirl

O' the lathe his foot described!--stands opposite,

Strikes through the liver! and supine the boy

Bedews the stone shafts, breathing out his life.

But "Victory" he shouted! boasted thus:

"Well, this one nestling of Eurustheus--dead--

Falls by me, pays back the paternal hate!"

Then bends bow on another who was crouched

At base of altar--overlooked, he thought--

And now prevents him, falls at father's knee,

Throwing up hand to beard and cheek above.

"O dearest!" cries he, "father, kill me not!

Yours, I am--your boy: not Eurustheus' boy

You kill now!" But he, rolling the wild eye

Of Gorgon,--as the boy stood all too close

For deadly bowshot,--mimicry of smith

Who batters red-hot iron,--hand o'er head

Heaving his club, on the boy's yellow hair

Hurls it and breaks the bone. This second caught,--

He goes, would slay the third, one sacrifice

He and the couple; but, beforehand here,

The miserable mother catches up,

Carries him inside house and bars the gate.

Then he, as he were at those Kuklops' work,

Digs at, heaves doors up, wrenches doorposts out,

Lays wife and child low with the selfsame shaft.

And this done, at the old man's death he drives;

But there came, as it seemed to us who saw,

A statue--Pallas with the crested head,

Swinging her spear--and threw a stone which smote

Herakles' breast and stayed his slaughter-rage,

And sent him safe to sleep. He falls to ground--

Striking against the column with his back--

Column which, with the falling of the roof,

Broken in two, lay by the altar-base.

And we, foot-free now from our several flights,

Along with the old man, we fastened bonds

Of rope-noose to the column, so that he,

Ceasing from sleep, might not go adding deeds

To deeds done. And he sleeps a sleep, poor wretch,

No gift of any god! since he has slain

Children and wife. For me, I do not know

What mortal has more misery to bear.

_Cho._ A murder there was which Argolis

Holds in remembrance, Hellas through,

As, at that time, best and famousest:

Of those, the daughters of Danaos slew.

A murder indeed was that! but this

Outstrips it, straight to the goal has pressed.

I am able to speak of a murder done

To the hapless Zeus-born offspring, too--

Proknè's son, who had but one--

Or a sacrifice to the Muses, say

Rather, who Itus sing alway,

Her single child! But thou, the sire

Of children three--O thou consuming fire!--

In one outrageous fate hast made them all expire!

And this outrageous fate--

What groan, or wail, or deadmen's dirge,

Or choric dance of Haides shall I urge

The Muse to celebrate?

Woe! woe! behold!

The portalled palace lies unrolled,

This way and that way, each prodigious fold!

Alas for me! these children, see,

Stretched, hapless group, before their father--he

The all-unhappy, who lies sleeping out

The murder of his sons, a dreadful sleep!

And bonds, see, all about,--

Rope-tangle, ties and tether,--these

Tightenings around the body of Herakles

To the stone columns of the house made fast!

But--like a bird that grieves

For callow nestlings some rude hand bereaves--

See, here, a bitter journey overpast,

The old man--all too late--is here at last!

_Amph._ Silently, silently, aged Kadmeians!

Will ye not suffer my son, diffused

Yonder, to slide from his sorrows in sleep?

_Cho._ And thee, old man, do I, groaning, weep,

And the children too, and the head there--used

Of old to the wreaths and paians!

_Amph._ Farther away! Nor beat the breast,

Nor wail aloud, nor rouse from rest

The slumberer--asleep, so best!

_Cho._ Ah me--what a slaughter!

_Amph._ Refrain--refrain!

Ye will prove my perdition!

_Cho._ Unlike water,

Bloodshed rises from earth again!

_Amph._ Do I bid you bate your breath, in vain--

Ye elders? Lament in a softer strain!

Lest he rouse himself, burst every chain,

And bury the city in ravage--bray

Father and house to dust away!

_Cho._ I cannot forbear--I cannot forbear!

_Amph._ Hush! I will learn his breathings: there!

I will lay my ears close.

_Cho._ What, he sleeps?

_Amph._ Ay,--sleeps! A horror of slumber keeps

The man who has piled

On wife and child

Death and death, as he shot them down

With clang o'the bow.

_Cho._ Wail--

_Amph._ Even so!

_Cho._ --The fate of the children--

_Amph._ Triple woe!

_Cho._ --Old man, the fate of thy son!

_Amph._ Hush, hush! Have done!

He is turning about!

He is breaking out!

Away! I steal

And my body conceal,

Before he arouse,

In the depths of the house!

_Cho._ Courage! The Night

Maintains her right

On the lids of thy son there, sealed from sight!

_Amph._ See, see! To leave the light

And, wretch that I am, bear one last ill,

I do not avoid; but if he kill

Me, his own father, and devise

Beyond the present miseries

A misery more ghastly still--

And to haunt him, over and above

Those here who, as they used to love,

Now hate him, what if he have with these

My murder, the worst of Erinues?

_Cho._ Then was the time to die, for thee,

When ready to wreak in the full degree

Vengeance on those

Thy consort's foes

Who murdered her brothers! glad, life's close,

With the Taphioi down,

And sacked their town

Clustered about with a wash of sea!

_Amph._ Tonight--to flight!

Away from the house, troop off, old men!

Save yourselves out of the maniac's sight!

He is rousing himself right up: and then,

Murder on murder heaping anew,

He will revel in blood your city through!

_Cho._ O Zeus, why hast, with such unmeasured hate,

Hated thy son, whelmed in this sea of woes?

_Her._ Ha,--

In breath indeed I am--see things I ought--

Æther, and earth, and these the sunbeam-shafts!

But then--some billow and strange whirl of sense

I have fallen into! and breathings hot I breathe--

Smoked upwards, not the steady work from lungs.

See now! Why, bound--at moorings like a ship,--

About my young breast and young arm, to this

Stone piece of carved work broke in half, do I

Sit, have my rest in corpses' neighborhood?

Strewn on the ground are wingèd darts, and bow

Which played, my brother-shieldman, held in hand,--

Guarded my side, and got my guardianship!

I cannot have gone back to Haides--twice.

Begun Eurustheus' race I ended thence?

But I nor see the Sisupheian stone,

Nor Plouton, nor Demeter's sceptred maid!

I am struck witless sure! Where can I be?

Ho there! what friend of mine is near or far--

Some one to cure me of bewilderment?

For naught familiar do I recognize.

_Amph._ Old friends, shall I go close to these my woes?

_Cho._ Ay, and let me too,--nor desert your ills!

_Her._ Father, why weepest thou, and buriest up

Thine eyes, aloof so from thy much-loved son?

_Amph._ O child!--for, faring badly, mine thou art!

_Her._ Do I fare somehow ill, that tears should flow?

_Amph._ Ill,--would cause any god who bore to groan!

_Her._ That's boasting, truly! still, you state no hap.

_Amph._ For, thyself seest--if in thy wits again.

_Her._ Heyday! How riddlingly that hint returns!

_Amph._ Well, I am trying--art thou sane and sound!

_Her._ Say if thou lay'st aught strange to my life's charge!

_Amph._ If thou no more art Haides-drunk,--I tell!

_Her._ I bring to mind no drunkenness of soul.

_Amph._ Shall I unbind my son, old men, or what?

_Her._ And who was binder, tell!--not _that_, my deed!

_Amph._ Mind that much of misfortune--pass the rest!

_Her._ Enough! from silence, I nor learn nor wish.

_Amph._ O Zeus, dost witness here throned Heré's work?

_Her._ But have I had to bear aught hostile thence?

_Amph._ Let be the goddess--bury thine own guilt!

_Her._ Undone! What is the sorrow thou wilt say?

_Amph._ Look! See the ruins of thy children here!

_Her._ Ah me! What sight do wretched I behold?

_Amph._ Unfair fight, son, this fight thou fastenedst

On thine own children!

_Her._ What fight? Who slew these?

_Amph._ Thou and thy bow, and who of gods was cause.

_Her._ How say'st? What did I? Ill-announcing sire!

_Amph._ --Go mad! Thou askest a sad clearing up!

_Her._ And am I also murderer of my wife?

_Amph._ All the work here was just one hand's work--thine!

_Her._ Ai ai--for groans encompass me--a cloud!

_Amph._ For these deeds' sake do I begroan thy fate!

_Her._ Did I break up my house or dance it down?

_Amph._ I know just one thing--all 's a woe with thee!

_Her._ But where did the craze catch me, where destroy?

_Amph._ When thou didst cleanse hands at the altar-flame.

_Her._ Ah me! why is it then I save my life--

Proved murderer of my dearest ones, my boys?

Shall not I rush to the rock-level's leap,

Or, darting sword through breast and all, become

My children's blood-avenger? or, this flesh

Burning away with fire, so thrust away

The infamy, which waits me there, from life?

Ah, but,--a hindrance to my purposed death,

Theseus arrives, my friend and kinsman, here!

Eyes will be on me! my child-murder-plague

In evidence before friends loved so much!

O me, what shall I do? Where, taking wing

Or gliding underground, shall I seek out

A solitariness from misery?

I will pull night upon my muffled head!

Let this wretch here content him with his curse

Of blood: I would pollute no innocents!

_Theseus._ I come,--with others who await beside

Asopos' stream, the armed Athenian youth,--

Bring thy son, old man, spear's fight-fellowship!

For a bruit reached the Erechtheidai's town

That, having seized the sceptre of this realm,

Lukos prepares you battle-violence.

So, paying good back,--Herakles began,

Saving me down there,--I have come, old man,

If aught, of my hand or my friends', you want.

What 's here? Why all these corpses on the ground?

Am I perhaps behindhand--come too late

For newer ill? Who killed these children now?

Whose wife was she, this woman I behold?

Boys, at least, take no stand in reach of spear!

Some other woe than war, I chance upon!

_Amph._ O thou, who sway'st the olive-bearing height!--

_Thes._ Why hail'st thou me with woeful prelude thus?

_Amph._ Dire sufferings have we suffered from the gods.

_Thes._ These boys,--who are they, thou art weeping o'er?

_Amph._ He gave them birth, indeed, my hapless son!

Begot, but killed them--dared their bloody death.

_Thes._ Speak no such horror!

_Amph._ Would I might obey!

_Thes._ O teller of dread tidings!

_Amph._ Lost are we--

Lost--flown away from life!

_Thes._ What sayest thou?

What did he?

_Amph._ Erring through a frenzy-fit,

He did all, with the arrows dipt in dye

Of hundred-headed Hudra.

_Thes._ Heré 's strife!

But who is this among the dead, old man?

_Amph._ Mine, mine, this progeny--the labor-plagued,

Who went with gods once to Phlegruia's plain.

And in the giant-slaying war bore shield!

_Thes._ Woe--woe! What man was born mischanceful thus!

_Amph._ Thou couldst not know another mortal man

Toil-weary, more outworn by wanderings.

_Thes._ And why i' the peploi hides he his sad head?

_Amph._ Not daring meet thine eye, thy friendliness

And kinship,--nor that children's--blood about!

_Thes._ But _I_ come to who shared my woe with me!

Uncover him!

_Amph._ O child, put from thine eyes

The peplos, throw it off, show face to sun!

Woe's weight well matched contends with tears in thee.

I supplicate thee, falling at thy cheek

And knee and hand, and shedding this old tear!

O son, remit the savage lion's mood,

Since to a bloody, an unholy race

Art thou led forth, if thou be resolute

To go on adding ill to ill, my child!

_Thes._ Let me speak! Thee, who sittest--seated woe--

I call upon to show thy friends thine eye!

For there 's no darkness has a cloud so black

May hide thy misery thus absolute.

Why, waving hand, dost sign me--murder 's done?

Lest a pollution strike me, from thy speech?

Naught care I to--with thee, at least--fare ill:

For I had joy once! _Then_,--soul rises to,--

When thou didst save me from the dead to light!

Friends' gratitude that tastes old age, I loathe,

And him who likes to share when things look fine,

But, sail along with friends in trouble--no!

Arise, uncover thine unhappy head!

Look on us! Every man of the right race

Bears what, at least, the gods inflict, nor shrinks.

_Her._ Theseus, hast seen this match--my boys with me?

_Thes._ I heard of, now I see the ills thou sign'st.

_Her._ Why then hast thou displayed my head to sun?

_Thes._ Why? mortals bring no plague on aught divine!

_Her._ Fly, O unhappy, this my impious plague!

_Thes._ No plague of vengeance flits to friends from friends.

_Her._ I praise thee! But I helped thee,--that is truth.

_Thes._ And I, advantaged then, now pity thee.

_Her._ --The pitiable,--my children's murderer!

_Thes._ I mourn for thy sake, in this altered lot.

_Her._ Hast thou found others in still greater woe?

_Thes._ Thou, from earth, touchest heaven, one huge distress!

_Her._ Accordingly, I am prepared to die.

_Thes._ Think'st thou thy threats at all import the gods?

_Her._ Gods please themselves: to gods I give their like.

_Thes._ Shut thy mouth, lest big words bring bigger woe!

_Her._ I am full fraught with ills--no stowing more!

_Thes._ Thou wilt do--what, then? Whither moody borne?

_Her._ Dying, I go below earth whence I came.

_Thes._ Thou hast used words of--what man turns up first!

_Her._ While thou, being outside sorrow, schoolest me.

_Thes._ The much-enduring Herakles talks thus?--

_Her._ Not the so much-enduring: measure's past!

_Thes._ --Mainstay to mortals, and their mighty friend?

_Her._ They nowise profit me: but Heré rules.

_Thes._ Hellas forbids thou shouldst ineptly die.

_Her._ But hear, then, how I strive by arguments

Against thy teachings! I will ope thee out

My life--past, present--as unlivable.

First, I was born of this man, who had slain

His mother's aged sire, and, sullied so,

Married Alkmené, she who gave me birth.

Now, when the basis of a family

Is not laid right, what follows needs must fall;

And Zeus, whoever Zeus is, formed me foe

To Heré (take not thou offence, old man!

Since father, in Zeus' stead, account I thee)

And, while I was at suck yet, frightful snakes

She introduced among my swaddling-clothes,--

That bedfellow of Zeus!--to end me so.

But when I gained the youthful garb of flesh,

The labors I endured--what need to tell?

What lions ever, or three-bodied brutes,

Tuphons or giants, or the four-legg'd swarms

Of Kentaur-battle, did not I end out?

And that hound, headed all about with heads

Which cropped up twice, the Hudra, having slain--

I both went through a myriad other toils

In full drove, and arrived among the dead

To convoy, as Eurustheus bade, to light

Haides' three-headed dog and doorkeeper.

But then I,--wretch,--dared this last labor--see!

Slew my sons, keystone-coped my house with ills,

To such a strait I come! nor my dear Thebes

Dare I inhabit,--and, suppose I stay?

Into what fane or festival of friends

Am I to go? My curse scarce courts accost!

Shall I seek Argos? How, if fled from home?

But say,--I hurry to some other town!

And there they eye me, as notorious now,--

Kept by sharp tongue-taunts under lock and key--

"Is not this he, Zeus' son, who murdered once

Children and wife? Let him go rot elsewhere!"

To any man renowned as happy once,

Reverses are a grave thing; but to whom

Evil is old acquaintance, there 's no hurt

To speak of, he and misery are twins.

To this degree of woe I think to come:

For earth will utter voice forbidding me

To touch the ground, and sea--to pierce the wave,

The river-springs--to drink, and I shall play

Ixion's part quite out, the chained and wheeled!

And best of all will be, if so I 'scape

Sight from one man of those Hellenes,--once

I lived among, felicitous and rich!

Why ought I then to live? What gain accrues

From good-for-nothing, wicked life I lead?

In fine, let Zeus' brave consort dance and sing,

Stamp foot, the Olumpian Zeus' own sandal-trick!

What she has willed, that brings her will to pass--

The foremost man of Hellas pedestalled,

Up, over, and down whirling! Who would pray

To such a goddess?--that, begrudging Zeus

Because he loved a woman, ruins me--

Lover of Hellas, faultless of the wrong!

_Thes._ This strife is from no other of the gods

Than Zeus' wife; rightly apprehend, as well,

Why, to no death--thou meditatest now--

I would persuade thee, but to bear thy woes!

None, none of mortals boasts a fate unmixed,

Nor gods--if poets' teaching be not false.

Have not they joined in wedlock against law

With one another? not, for sake of rule,

Branded their sires in bondage? Yet they house,

All the same, in Olumpos, carry heads

High there, notorious sinners though they be!

What wilt thou say, then, if thou, mortal-born,

Bearest outrageously fate gods endure?

Leave Thebes, now, pay obedience to the law,

And follow me to Pallas' citadel!

There, when thy hands are purified from stain,

House will I give thee, and goods shared alike.

What gifts I hold too from the citizens

For saving twice seven children, when I slew

The Knosian bull, these also give I thee.

And everywhere about the land are plots

Apportioned me: these, named by thine own name,

Shall be henceforward styled by all men--thine,

Thy life-long; but at death, when Haides-bound,

All Athens shall uphold the honored one

With sacrifices, and huge marble heaps:

For that's a fair crown our Hellenes grant

Their people--glory, should they help the brave!

And I repay thee back this grace for thine

That saved me, now that thou art lorn of friends--

Since, when the gods give honor, friends may flit:

For, a god's help suffices, if he please.

_Her._ Ah me, these words are foreign to my woes!

I neither fancy gods love lawless beds,

Nor, that with chains they bind each other's hands,

Have I judged worthy faith, at any time;

Nor shall I be persuaded--one is born

His fellows' master! since God stands in need--

If he is really God--of naught at all.

These are the poets' pitiful conceits!

But this it was I pondered, though woe-whelmed--

"Take heed lest thou be taxed with cowardice

Somehow in leaving thus the light of day!"

For whoso cannot make a stand against

These same misfortunes, neither could withstand

A mere man's dart, oppose death, strength to strength.

Therefore unto thy city I will go

And have the grace of thy ten thousand gifts.

There! I have tasted of ten thousand toils

As truly--never waived a single one,

Nor let these runnings drop from out my eyes!

Nor ever thought it would have come to this--

That I from out my eyes do drop tears! Well!

At present, as it seems, one bows to fate.

So be it! Old man, thou seest my exile--

Seest, too, me--my children's murderer!

These give thou to the tomb, and deck the dead,

Doing them honor with thy tears--since me

Law does not sanction! Propping on her breast,

And giving them into their mother's arms,

--Reinstitute the sad community

Which I, unhappy, brought to nothingness--

Not by my will! And, when earth hides the dead,

Live in this city!--sad, but, all the same,

Force thy soul to bear woe along with me!

O children, who begat and gave you birth--

Your father--has destroyed you! naught you gain

By those fair deeds of mine I laid you up,

As by main-force I labored glory out

To give you,--that fine gift of fatherhood!

And thee, too, O my poor one, I destroyed.

Not rendering like for like, as when thou kept'st

My marriage-bed inviolate,--those long

Household-seclusions draining to the dregs

Inside my house! O me, my wife, my boys--

And--O myself, how, miserably moved.

Am I disyoked now from both boys and wife!

Oh, bitter those delights of kisses now--

And bitter these my weapons' fellowship!

For I am doubtful whether shall I keep

Or cast away these arrows which will clang

Ever such words out, as they knock my side--

"Us--thou didst murder wife and children with!

Us--child--destroyers--still thou keepest thine!"

Ha, shall I bear them in my arms, then? What

Say for excuse? Yet, naked of my darts

Wherewith I did my bravest, Hellas through,

Throwing myself beneath foot to my foes,

Shall I die basely? No! relinquishment

Of these must never be,--companions once,

We sorrowfully must observe the pact!

In just one thing, co-operate with me

Thy sad friend, Theseus! Go along with him

To Argos, and in concert get arranged

The price my due for bringing there the Hound!

O land of Kadmos, Theban people all,

Shear off your locks, lament one wide lament,

Go to my children's grave and, in one strain,

Lament the whole of us--my dead and me--

Since all together are foredone and lost,

Smitten by Herd's single stroke of fate!

_Thes._ Rise up now from thy dead ones! Tears enough,

Poor friend!

_Her._ I cannot: for my limbs are fixed.

_Thes._ Ay: even these strong men fate overthrows!

_Her._ Woe!

Here might I grow a stone, nor mind woes more!

_Thes._ Cease! Give thy hand to friendly helpmate now!

_Her._ Nay, but I wipe off blood upon thy robes!

_Thes._ Squeeze out and spare no drop! I take it all!

_Her._ Of sons bereaved, I have thee like my son!

_Thes._ Give to my neck thy hand! 'tis I will lead.

_Her._ Yoke-fellows friendly--one heartbroken, though!

O father! such a man we need for friend!

_Amph._ Certes, the land that bred him boasts good sons!

_Her._ Turn me round, Theseus--to behold my boys!

_Thes._ What? will the having such a love-charm soothe?

_Her._ I want it; and to press my father's breast.

_Amph._ See here, O son! for, what I love thou seek'st!

_Thes._ Strange! Of thy labors no more memory?

_Her._ All those were less than these, those ills I bore!

_Thes._ Who sees thee grow a woman,--will not praise!

_Her._ I live low to thee? Not so once, I think!

_Thes._ Too low by far! "Famed Herakles"--where 's he?

_Her._ Down amid evils, of what kind wast _thou?_

_Thes._ As far as courage--least of all mankind!

_Her._ How say'st, then, _I_ in evils shrink to naught?

_Thes._ Forward!

_Her._ Farewell, old father!

_Amph._ Thou too, son!

_Her._ Bury the boys as I enjoined!

_Amph._ And _me_--

Who will be found to bury now, my child?

_Her._ Myself!

_Amph._ When, coming?

_Her._ When thy task is done.

_Amph._ How?

_Her._ I will have thee carried forth from Thebes

To Athens. But bear in the children, earth

Is burdened by! Myself,--who with these shames

Have cast away my house,--a ruined hulk,

I follow--trailed by Theseus--on my way;

And whoso rather would have wealth and strength

Than good friends, reasons foolishly therein!

_Cho._ And we depart, with sorrow at heart,

Sobs that increase with tears that start;

The greatest of all our friends of yore

We have lost forevermore!

* * * * *

When the long silence ended,--"Our best friend--

Lost, our best friend!" he muttered musingly.

Then, "Lachares the sculptor" (half aloud)

"Sinned he or sinned he not? 'Outrageous sin!'

Shuddered our elders, 'Pallas should be clothed:

He carved her naked.' 'But more beautiful!'

Answers this generation: 'Wisdom formed

For love not fear!' And there the statue stands,

Entraps the eye severer art repels.

Moreover, Pallas wields the thunderbolt,

Yet has not struck the artist all this while.

Pheidias and Aischulos? Euripides

And Lachares? But youth will have its way!

The ripe man ought to be as old as young--

As young as old. I too have youth at need.

Much may be said for stripping wisdom bare!

"And who 's 'our best friend'? You play kottabos;

Here 's the last mode of playing. Take a sphere

With orifices at due interval,

Through topmost one of which, a throw adroit

Sends wine from cup, clean passage, from outside

To where, in hollow midst, a manikin

Suspended ever bobs with head erect

Right underneath whatever hole 's a-top

When you set orb a-rolling: plumb, he gets

Ever this benediction of the splash.

An other-fashioned orb presents him fixed:

Of all the outlets, he fronts only one,

And only when that one--and rare the chance--

Comes uppermost, does he turn upward too:

He can't turn all sides with the turning orb.

Inside this sphere of life--all objects, sense

And soul perceive--Euripides hangs fixed,

Gets knowledge through the single aperture

Of High and Right: with visage fronting these

He waits the wine thence ere he operate,

Work in the world and write a tragedy.

When that hole happens to revolve to point,

In drops the knowledge, waiting meets reward.

But, duly in rotation, Low and Wrong--

When these enjoy the moment's altitude,

His heels are found just where his head should be!

No knowledge that way! _I_ am movable,--

To slightest shift of orb make prompt response,

Face Low and Wrong and Weak and all the rest,

And still drink knowledge, wine-drenched every turn,--

Equally favored by their opposites.

Little and Bad exist, are natural:

Then let me know them, and be twice as great

As he who only knows one phase of life!

So doubly shall I prove 'best friend of man,'

If I report the whole truth--Vice, perceived

While he shut eyes to all but Virtue there.

Man 's made of both: and both must be of use

To somebody: if not to him, to me.

While, as to your imaginary Third,

Who,--stationed (by mechanics past my guess)

So as to take in every side at once,

And not successively,--may reconcile

The High and Low in tragicomic verse,--

He shall be hailed superior to us both

When born--in the Tin-islands! Meantime, here

In bright Athenai, I contest the claim,

Call myself Iostephanos' 'best friend,'

Who took my own course, worked as I descried

Ordainment, stuck to my first faculty!

"For, listen! There 's no failure breaks the heart,

Whate'er be man's endeavor in this world,

Like the rash poet's when he--nowise fails

By poetizing badly,--Zeus or makes

Or mars a man, so--at it, merrily!

But when,--made man,--much like myself,--equipt

For such and such achievement,--rash he turns

Out of the straight path, bent on snatch of feat

From--who 's the appointed fellow born thereto,--

Crows take him!--in your Kassiterides?

Half-doing his work, leaving mine untouched,

That were the failure! Here I stand, heart-whole,

No Thamuris!

"Well thought of, Thamuris!

Has zeal, pray, for 'best friend' Euripides

Allowed you to observe the honor done

His elder rival, in our Poikilé?

You don't know? Once and only once, trod stage,

Sang and touched lyre in person, in his youth,

Our Sophokles,--youth, beauty, dedicate

To Thamuris who named the tragedy.

The voice of him was weak; face, limbs and lyre,

These were worth saving: Thamuris stands yet

Perfect as painting helps in such a case.

At least you know the story, for 'best friend'

Enriched his 'Rhesos' from the Blind Bard's store;

So haste and see the work, and lay to heart

What it was struck me when I eyed the piece!

Here stands a poet punished for rash strife

With Powers above his power, who see with sight

Beyond his vision, sing accordingly

A song, which he must needs dare emulate!

Poet, remain the man nor ape the Muse!

"But--lend me the psalterion! Nay, for once--

Once let my hand fall where the other's lay!

I see it, just as I were Sophokles,

That sunrise and combustion of the east!"

And then he sang--are these unlike the words?

Thamuris marching,--lyre and song of Thrace--

(Perpend the first, the worst of woes that were,

Allotted lyre and song, ye poet-race!)

Thamuris from Oichalia, feasted there

By kingly Eurutos of late, now bound

For Dorion at the uprise broad and bare

Of Mount Pangaios (ore with earth enwound

Glittered beneath his footstep)--marching gay

And glad, Thessalia through, came, robed and crowned,

From triumph on to triumph, 'mid a ray

Of early morn,--came, saw and knew the spot

Assigned him for his worst of woes, that day.

Balura--happier while its name was not--

Met him, but nowise menaced; slipt aside,

Obsequious river, to pursue its lot

Of solacing the valley--say, some wide

Thick busy human cluster, house and home,

Embanked for peace, or thrift that thanks the tide.

Thamuris, marching, laughed "Each flake of foam"

(As sparklingly the ripple raced him by)

"Mocks slower clouds adrift in the blue dome!"

For Autumn was the season: red the sky

Held morn's conclusive signet of the sun

To break the mists up, bid them blaze and die.

Morn had the mastery as, one by one,

All pomps produced themselves along the tract

From earth's far ending to near heaven begun.

Was there a ravaged tree? it laughed compact

With gold, a leaf-ball crisp, high-brandished now,

Tempting to onset frost which late attacked.

Was there a wizened shrub, a starveling bough,

A fleecy thistle filched from by the wind,

A weed, Pan's trampling hoof would disallow?

Each, with a glory and a rapture twined

About it, joined the rush of air and light

And force: the world was of one joyous mind.

Say not the birds flew! they forebore their right--

Swam, revelling onward in the roll of things.

Say not the beasts' mirth bounded! that was flight--

How could the creatures leap, no lift of wings?

Such earth's community of purpose, such

The ease of earth's fulfilled imaginings,--

So did the near and far appear to touch

I' the moment's transport,--that an interchange

Of function, far with near, seemed scarce too much;

And had the rooted plant aspired to range

With the snake's license, while the insect yearned

To glow fixed as the flower it were not strange--

No more than if the fluttery tree-top turned

To actual music, sang itself aloft;

Or if the wind, impassioned chantress, earned

The right to soar embodied in some soft

Fine form all fit for cloud-companionship,

And, blissful, once touch beauty chased so oft.

Thamuris, marching, let no fancy slip

Born of the fiery transport; lyre and song

Were his, to smite with hand and launch from lip--

Peerless recorded, since the list grew long

Of poets (saith Homeros) free to stand

Pedestalled 'mid the Muses' temple-throng,

A statued service, laurelled, lyre in hand,

(Ay, for we see them)--Thamuris of Thrace

Predominating foremost of the band.

Therefore the morn-ray that enriched his face,

If it gave lambent chill, took flame again

From flush of pride; he saw, he knew the place.

What wind arrived with all the rhythms from plain,

Hill, dale, and that rough wildwood interspersed?

Compounding these to one consummate strain,

It reached him, music; but his own outburst

Of victory concluded the account,

And that grew song which was mere music erst.

"Be my Parnassos, thou Pangaian mount!

And turn thee, river, nameless hitherto!

Famed shalt thou vie with famed Pieria's fount!