Nor grief, nor pity, but revenge, should move.
Through the twelve signs had pass’d the circling sun,
And round the compass of the zodiac run;
What must unhappy Philomela do,
For ever subject to her keeper’s view?
Huge walls of massy stone the lodge surround,
From her own mouth no way of speaking’s found.
But all our wants by wit may be supplied,
And art makes up what fortune has denied.
With skill exact a Phrygian web she strung,
Fix’d to a loom that in her chamber hung,
Where inwrought letters, upon white display’d,
In purple notes, her wretched case betray’d.
The piece, when finish’d, secretly she gave
Into the charge of one poor menial slave;
And then, with gestures, made him understand
It must be safe convey’d to Procne’s hand.
The slave, with speed, the queen’s apartment sought,
And render’d up his charge, unknowing what he brought.
But when the ciphers, figured in each fold,
Her sister’s melancholy story told,
(Strange that she could!) with silence she survey’d
The tragic piece, and without weeping read:
In such tumultuous haste her passions sprung,
They choked her voice, and quite disarm’d her tongue.
No room for female tears; the Furies rise,
Darting vindictive glances from her eyes;
And, stung with rage, she bounds from place to place,
While stern revenge sits low’ring in her face.
Now the triennial celebration came,
Observed to Bacchus by each Thracian dame;
When, in the privacies of night retired,
They act his rites, with sacred rapture fired.
By night, the tinkling cymbals ring around,
While the shrill notes from Rhodope resound;
By night, the queen, disguised, forsakes the court,
To mingle in the festival resort:
Leaves of the curling vine her temples shade,
And, with a circling wreath, adorn her head;
Adown her back the stag’s rough spoils appear,
Light on her shoulder leans a cornel spear.
Thus, in the fury of the god conceal’d,
Procne her own mad headstrong passion veil’d:
Now, with her gang, to the thick wood she flies,
And with religious yellings fills the skies:
The fatal lodge, as ’twere by chance, she seeks,
And through the bolted doors an entrance breaks.
From thence, her sister snatching by the hand,
Mask’d like the ranting Bacchanalian band,
Within the limits of the court she drew,
Shading, with ivy green, her outward hue.
But Philomela, conscious of the place,
Felt new reviving pangs of her disgrace;
A shiv’ring cold prevail’d in ev’ry part,
And the chill’d blood ran trembling to her heart.
Soon as the queen a fit retirement found,
Stripp’d of the garlands that her temples crown’d,
She straight unveil’d her blushing sister’s face,
And fondly clasp’d her with a close embrace:
But, in confusion lost, the unhappy maid,
With shame dejected, hung her drooping head,
As guilty of a crime that stain’d her sister’s bed.
That speech, that should her injured virtue clear,
And make her spotless innocence appear,
Is now no more, only her hands and eyes
Appeal, in signals, to the conscious skies.
In Procne’s breast the rising passions boil,
And burst in anger with a mad recoil;
Her sister’s ill-timed grief with scorn she blames,
Then, in these furious words, her rage proclaims:
“Tears, unavailing, but defer our time,
The stabbing sword must expiate the crime;
Or worse, if wit, on bloody vengeance bent,
A weapon more tormenting can invent.
O sister! I’ve prepared my stubborn heart
To act some hellish and unheard-of part;
Either the palace to surround with fire,
And see the villain in the flames expire,
Or, with a knife, dig out his cursed eyes,
Or his false tongue with racking engines seize.
Tortures enough my passion has design’d,
But the variety distracts my mind.”
Awhile thus wav’ring stood the furious dame,
When Itys fondling to his mother came;
From him the cruel, fatal hint she took,
She view’d him with a stern, remorseless look;
“Ah! but too like thy wicked sire,” she said,
Forming the direful purpose in her head.
At this a sullen grief her voice suppress’d,
While silent passions struggle in her breast.
Now, at her lap arrived, the flatt’ring boy
Salutes his parent with a smiling joy:
About her neck his little arms are thrown,
And he accosts her in a prattling tone;
Then her tempestuous anger was allay’d,
And in its full career her vengeance stay’d;
While tender thoughts, in spite of passion, rise,
And melting tears disarm her threat’ning eyes.
But, when she found the mother’s easy heart
Too fondly swerving from the intended part,
Her injured sister’s face again she view’d,
And, as by turns, surveying both she stood.
“While this fond boy,” she said, “can thus express
The moving accents of his fond address,
Why stands my sister of her tongue bereft,
Forlorn and sad, in speechless silence left?
O Procne! see the fortune of your house;
Such is your fate when match’d to such a spouse!
Conjugal duty, if observed to him,
Would change from virtue, and become a crime:
For all respect to Tereus must debase
The noble blood of great Pandion’s race.”
Straight, at these words, with big resentment fill’d,
Furious her look, she flew and seized her child,
Like a fell tigress of the savage kind,
That drags the tender suckling of the hind
Through India’s gloomy groves, where Ganges laves
The shady scene, and rolls his streamy waves.
Now to a close apartment they were come,
Far off retired within the spacious dome,
When Procne, on revengeful mischief bent,
Home to his heart a piercing poniard sent.
Itys, with rueful cries, but all too late,
Holds out his hands, and deprecates his fate,
Still at his mother’s neck he fondly aims,
And strives to melt her with endearing names;
Yet still the cruel mother perseveres,
Nor with concern his bitter anguish hears.
This might suffice; but Philomela too
Across his throat a shining cutlass drew.
Then both, with knives, dissect each quiv’ring part,
And carve the butcher’d limbs with cruel art,
Which, whelm’d in boiling cauldrons o’er the fire,
Or, turn’d on spits, in steamy smoke aspire;
While the long entries, with their slippery floor,
Run down in purple streams of clotted gore.
Ask’d by his wife to this inhuman feast,
Tereus, unknowingly, is made a guest,
While she, her plot the better to disguise,
Styles it some unknown mystic sacrifice;
And such the nature of the hallow’d rite,
The wife her husband only could invite;
The slaves must all withdraw, and be debarr’d the sight.
Tereus, upon a throne of antique state,
Loftily raised, before the banquet sate;
And, glutton like, luxuriously pleased,
With his own flesh his hungry maw appeased.
Nay, such a blindness o’er his senses falls
That he for Itys to the table calls.
When Procne, now impatient to disclose
The joy that from her full revenge arose,
Cries out, in transports of a cruel mind,
“Within
