Oh race confed'rate into crimes, that prove
Triumphant o'er th' eluded rage of Jove!
This wearied arm can scarce the bolt sustain,
And unregarded thunder rolls in vain:
Th' o'erlabour'd Cyclops from his task retires,
Th' Æolian force exhausted of its fires.
For this, I suffer'd Phoebus' steeds to stray,
And the mad ruler to misguide the day.
When the wide earth to heaps of ashes turn'd,
And heaven itself the wand'ring chariot burn'd.
For this, my brother of the watery reign
Released th' impetuous sluices of the main:
But flames consumed, and billows raged in vain.
Two races now, allied to Jove, offend;
To punish these, see Jove himself descend.
The Theban kings their line from Cadmus trace,
From godlike Perseus those of Argive race.
Unhappy Cadmus' fate who does not know,
And the long series of succeeding wo?
How oft the Furies, from the deeps of night,
Arose, and mix'd with men in mortal fight:
Th' exulting mother, stain'd with filial blood;
The savage hunter and the haunted wood?
The direful banquet why should I proclaim,
And crimes that grieve the trembling gods to name?
Ere I recount the sins of these profane,
The sun would sink into the western main,
And rising gild the radiant east again.
Have we not seen (the blood of Laïus shed)
The murd'ring son ascend his parent's bed,
Through violated Nature force his way,
And stain the sacred womb where once he lay?
Yet now in darkness and despair he groans,
And for the crimes of guilty fate atones;
His sons with scorn their eyeless father view,
Insult his wounds, and make them bleed anew.
Thy curse, O Edipus, just Heaven alarms,
And sets th' avenging Thunderer in arms.
I from the root thy guilty race will tear,
And give the nations to the waste of war.
Adrastus soon, with gods averse, shall join
In dire alliance with the Theban line;
Hence strife shall rise, and mortal war succeed;
The guilty realms of Tantalus shall bleed;
Fix'd is their doom: this all-rememb'ring breast
Yet harbours vengeance for the tyrant's feast.
He said; and thus the queen of heaven return'd :
(With sudden grief her lab'ring bosom burn'd);
Must I, whose cares Phoroneus' towers defend,
Must I, O Jove, in bloody wars contend?
Thou know'st those regions my protection claim,
Glorious in arms, in riches, and in fame;
Though there the fair Egyptian heifer fed,
And there deluded Argus slept, and bled;
Though there the brazen tower was storm'd of old,
When Jove descended in almighty gold.
Yet I can pardon those obscurer rapes,
Those bashful crimes disguised in borrow'd shapes:
But Thebes, where shining in celestial charms
Thou cam'st triumphant to a mortal's arms,
When all my glories o'er her limbs were spread,
And blazing lightnings danced around her bed;
Cursed Thebes the vengeance it deserves, may prove—
Ah why should Argos feel the rage of Jove?
Yet since thou wilt thy sister-queen control,
Since still the lust of discord fires thy soul,
Go, raze my Samos, let Mycene fall,
And level with the dust the Spartan wall;
No more let mortals Juno's power invoke,
Her fanes no more with eastern incense smoke,
Nor victims sink beneath the sacred stroke!
But to your Isis all my rites transfer,
Let altars blaze, and temples smoke for her;
For her, through Egypt's fruitful clime renown'd,
Let weeping Nilus hear the timbrel sound.
But if thou must reform the stubborn times,
Avenging on the sons the father's crimes,
And from the long records of distant age
Derive incitements to renew thy rage;
Say, from what period then has Jove design'd
To date his vengeance; to what bounds confined?
Begin from thence, where first Alpheus hides
His wand'ring stream, and through the briny tides
Unmix'd to his Sicilian river glides.
Thy own Arcadians there the thunder claim,
Whose impious rites disgrace thy mighty name;
Who raise thy temples where the chariot stood
Of fierce Enomaus, defiled with blood;
Where once his steeds their savage banquet found,
And human bones yet whiten all the ground.
Say, can those honours please; and canst thou love
Presumptuous Crete, that boasts the tomb of Jove!
And shall not Tantalus's kingdom share
Thy wife and sister's tutelary care?
Reverse, O Jove, thy too severe decree,
Nor doom to war a race derived from thee;
On impious realms and barbarous kings impose
Thy plagues, and curse them with such sons as those.3
Thus, in reproach and prayer, the queen express'd
The rage and grief contending in her breast;
Unmoved remain'd the ruler of the sky,
And from his throne return'd this stern reply:
'Twas thus I deem'd thy haughty soul would bear
The dire, though just, revenge which I prepare
Against a nation thy peculiar care.
No less Dione might for Thebes contend,
Nor Bacchus less his native town defend;
Yet these in silence see the Fates fulfil
Their work, and reverence our superior will.
For by the black infernal Styx I swear,
(That dreadful oath which binds the Thunderer)
'Tis fix'd; th' irrevocable doom of Jove;
No force can bend me, no persuasion move.
Haste then, Cyllenius, through the liquid air;
Go mount the winds, and to the shades repair;
Bid hell's black monarch my commands obey,
And give up Laïus to the realms of day,
Whose ghost yet shivering on Cocytus' sand,
Expects its passage to the further strand:
Let the pale sire revisit Thebes, and bear
These pleasing orders to the tyrant's ear;
That, from his exiled brother, swell'd with pride
Of foreign forces, and his Argive bride,
8 Eteocles and Polynices.
Almighty Jove commands him to detain
The promised empire, and alternate reign.
Be this the cause of more than mortal hate:
The rest, succeeding times shall ripen into Fate.
The god obeys, and to his feet applies
Those golden wings that cut the yielding skies.
His ample hat his beamy locks o'erspread,
And veil'd the starry glories of his head.
He seized the wand that causes sleep to fly,
Or in soft slumbers seals the wakeful eye;
That drives the dead to dark Tartarean coasts,
Or back to life compels the wand'ring ghosts.
Thus, through the parting clouds, the son of May
Wings on the whistling winds his rapid way;
Now smoothly steers through air his equal flight,
Now springs aloft, and towers th' ethereal height;
Then wheeling down the steep of heaven he flies,
And draws a radiant circle o'er the skies.
Meantime the banish'd Polynices roves
(His Thebes abandon'd) through th' Aonian groves,
While future realms his wandering thoughts delight,
His daily vision and his dream by night;
Forbidden Thebes appears before his eye,
From whence he sees his absent brother fly,
With transport views the airy rule his own,
And swells on an imaginary throne.
Fain would he cast a tedious age away,
And live out all in one triumphant day.
He chides the lazy progress of the sun,
And bids the year with swifter motion run.
With anxious hopes his craving mind is toss'd,
And all his joys in length of wishes lost.
The hero then resolves his course to bend
Where ancient Danaus' fruitful fields extend,
And famed Mycene's lofty towers ascend,
(Where late the son did Atreus' crimes detest,
And disappear'd in horror of the feast).
And now by chance, by fate, or furies led,
From Bacchus' consecrated caves he fled,
Where the shrill cries of frantic matrons sound,
And Pentheus' blood enrich'd the rising ground.
Then sees Citharon towering o'er the plain,
And thence declining gently to the main.
Next to the bounds of Nisus' realms repairs,
Where treach'rous Scylla cut the purple hairs:
The hanging cliffs of Syron's rock explores,
And hears the murmurs of the different shores:
Passes the strait that parts the foaming seas,
And stately Corinth's pleasing site surveys.
'Twas now the time when Phoebus yields to night,
And rising Cynthia sheds her silver light,
Wide o'er the world in solemn pomp she drew
Her airy chariot hung with pearly dew;
All birds and beasts lie hush'd; sleep steals away
The wild desires of men, and toils of day,
And brings, descending through the silent air,
A sweet forgetfulness of human care.
Yet no red clouds, with golden borders gay,
Promise the skies the bright return of day:
No faint reflections of the distant light
Streak with long gleams the scattering shades of night; From the damp earth impervious vapours rise,
Increase the darkness, and involve the skies.
At once the rushing winds with roaring sound
Burst from th' Eolian caves, and rend the ground.
With equal rage their airy quarrel try,
And win by turns the kingdom of the sky:
But with a thicker night black Auster shrouds
The heavens, and drives on heaps the rolling clouds,
From whose dark womb a rattling tempest pours,
Which the cold North congeals to haily showers.
From pole to pole the thunder roars aloud,
And broken lightnings flash from every cloud.
Now smokes with showers the misty mountain-ground,
And floated fields lie undistinguish'd round.
Th' Inachian streams with headlong fury run,
And Erasinus rolls a deluge on:
The foaming Lerna swells above its bounds,
And spreads its ancient poisons o'er the grounds:
Where late was dust, now rapid torrents play,
Rush through the mounds, and bear the dams away: 505
Old limbs of trees from crackling forests torn,
Are whirl'd in air, and on the winds are borne:
The storm the dark Lycæan groves display'd,
And first to light exposed the sacred shade.
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