1842

     I am a goddess of the ambrosia courts,

     And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassed

     By none whose temples whiten this the world.

     Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along;

     I shed in hell o'er my pale people peace;

     On earth I, caring for the creatures, guard

     Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek,

     And every feathered mother's callow brood,

     And all that love green haunts and loneliness.

     Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns                10

     Of poppies red to blackness, bell and stem,

     Upon my image at Athenai here;

     And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above,

     Was dearest to me.  He, my buskined step

     To follow through the wild-wood leafy ways,

     And chase the panting stag, or swift with darts

     Stop the swift ounce, or lay the leopard low,

     Neglected homage to another god:

     Whence Aphrodite, by no midnight smoke

     Of tapers lulled, in jealousy despatched                   20

     A noisome lust that, as the gad bee stings,

     Possessed his stepdame Phaidra for himself

     The son of Theseus her great absent spouse.

     Hippolutos exclaiming in his rage

     Against the fury of the Queen, she judged

     Life insupportable; and, pricked at heart

     An Amazonian stranger's race should dare

     To scorn her, perished by the murderous cord:

     Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scroll

     The fame of him her swerving made not swerve.              30

     And Theseus, read, returning, and believed,

     And exiled, in the blindness of his wrath,

     The man without a crime who, last as first,

     Loyal, divulged not to his sire the truth,

     Now Theseus from Poseidon had obtained

     That of his wishes should be granted three,

     And one he imprecated straight—"Alive

     May ne'er Hippolutos reach other lands!"

     Poseidon heard, ai ai! And scarce the prince

     Had stepped into the fixed boots of the car                40

     That give the feet a stay against the strength

     Of the Henetian horses, and around

     His body flung the rein, and urged their speed

     Along the rocks and shingles at the shore,

     When from the gaping wave a monster flung

     His obscene body in the coursers' path.

     These, mad  with terror, as the sea-bull sprawled

     Wallowing  about their feet, lost care of him

     That reared them; and the master-chariot-pole

     Snapping beneath their plunges like a reed,                50

     Hippolutos, whose feet were trammelled fast,

     Was yet dragged forward by the circling rein

     Which either hand directed; nor they quenched

     The frenzy of their flight before each trace,

     Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woful car,

     Each boulder-stone, sharp stub and spiny shell,

     Huge fish-bone wrecked and  wreathed amid the sands

     On that detested beach, was bright with blood

     And morsels of his flesh; then fell the steeds

     Head foremost, crashing in their mooned fronts,            60

     Shivering with sweat, each white eye horror-fixed.

     His people, who had witnessed all afar,

     Bore back the ruins of Hippolutos.

     But when his sire, too swoln with pride, rejoiced

     (Indomitable as a man foredoomed)

     That vast Poseidon had fulfilled his prayer,

     I, in a flood of glory visible,

     Stood o'er my dying votary and, deed

     By  deed, revealed, as all took place, the truth.

     Then Theseus lay the wofullest of men,                     70

     And  worthily; but ere the death-veils hid

     His face, the murdered prince full pardon breathed

     To his rash sire.  Whereat Athenai wails.

     So I, who ne'er forsake my votaries,

     Lest in the cross-way none the honey-cake

     Should tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life;

     Lest at my fane the priests disconsolate

     Should dress my image with some faded poor

     Few crowns, made favors of, nor dare object

     Such slackness to my worshippers who turn                  80

     Elsewhere the trusting heart and loaded hand,

     As they had climbed Olumpos to report

     Of Artemis and nowhere found her throne—

     I interposed: and, this eventful night

     (While round the funeral pyre the populace

     Stood with fierce light on their black robes which bound

     Each sobbing head, while yet their hair they clipped

     O'er the dead body of their withered prince,

     And, in his palace, Theseus prostrated

     On the cold hearth, his brow cold as the slab              90

     'T was bruised on, groaned away the heavy grief—

     As the pyre fell, and down the cross logs crashed

     Sending a crowd of sparkles through the night,

     And the gay fire, elate with mastery,

     Towered like a serpent o'er the clotted jars

     Of wine, dissolving oils and frankincense,

     And splendid gums like gold) my potency

     Conveyed the perished man to my retreat

     In the thrice-venerable forest here.

     And this white-bearded sage who squeezes now              100

     The berried plant, is Phoibos' son of fame,

     Asclepios, whom my  radiant brother taught

     The doctrine of each herb and flower and root,

     To know  their secret'st virtue and express

     The saving soul of all: who so has soothed

     With layers the torn brow and murdered cheeks,

     Composed the hair and brought its gloss again,

     And called the red bloom to the pale skin back,

     And laid the strips and lagged ends of flesh

     Even once more, and slacked the sinew's knot              110

     Of every tortured limb—that now he lies

     As if mere sleep possessed him underneath

     These interwoven oaks and pines.  Oh cheer,

     Divine presenter of the healing rod,

     Thy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye,

     Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer!

     Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies!

     And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs,

     Ply, as the sage directs, these buds and leaves

     That strew the turf around the twain! While I             120

     Await, in fitting silence, the event.

     NOTES

     "Artemis Prologizes" represents the goddess Artemis awaiting the

     revival of the youth Hippolytus, whom she has carried to her woods

     and given to Asclepios to heal. It is a fragment meant to introduce

     an unwritten work and carry on the story related by Euripides in

     "Hippolytus," which see.