There lay a log unlighted on the hearth,
When she was lab’ring in the throes of birth
For the unborn chief; the fatal sisters came,
And raised it up, and toss’d it on the flame;
Then on the rock a scanty measure place
Of vital flax, and turn’d the wheel apace,
And, turning, sung, “To this red brand and thee,
O, newborn babe! we give an equal destiny;”
So vanish’d out of view. The frighted dame
Sprung hasty from her bed, and quench’d the flame.
The log, in secret lock’d, she kept with care,
And that, while thus preserved, preserved her heir.
This brand she now produced, and first she strows
The hearth with heaps of chips, and after blows;
Thrice heaved her hand, and heaved, she thrice repress’d,
The sister and the mother long contest,
Two doubtful titles in one tender breast;
And now her eyes and cheeks with fury glow,
Now pale her cheeks, her eyes with pity flow;
Now low’ring looks presage approaching storms,
And now prevailing love her face reforms:
Resolved, she doubts again; the tears she dried
With burning rage, are by new tears supplied;
And, as a ship, which winds and waves assail,
Now with the current drives, now with the gale,
Both opposite, and neither long prevail.
She feels a double force, by turns obeys
The imperious tempest, and the impetuous seas;
So fares Althaea’s mind; she first relents
With pity, of that pity then repents:
Sister and mother long the scales divide,
But the beam nodded on the sister’s side:
Sometimes she softly sigh’d, then roar’d aloud;
But sighs were stifled in the cries of blood.
The pious impious wretch at length decreed,
To please her brothers’ ghosts, her son should bleed;
And when the funeral flames began to rise,
“Receive,” she said, “a sister’s sacrifice.
A mother’s bowels burn:” high in her hand,
Thus while she spoke, she held the fatal brand,
Then thrice before the kindled pile she bow’d,
And the three furies thrice invoked aloud:
“Come, come, revenging sisters, come and view
A sister paying her dead brothers’ due:
A crime I punish, and a crime commit;
But blood for blood, and death for death, is fit:
Great crimes must be with greater crimes repaid,
And second funerals on the former laid.
Let the whole household in one ruin fall,
And may Diana’s curse o’ertake us all!
Shall Fate to happy Oeneus still allow
One son, while Thestius stands deprived of two?
Better three lost than one unpunish’d go.
Take then, dear ghosts (while yet admitted new
In hell you wait my duty), take your due:
A costly offering on your tomb is laid,
When, with my blood, the price of yours is paid.
“Ah! whither am I hurried? Ah! forgive,
Ye shades, and let your sister’s issue live;
A mother cannot give him death; though he
Deserves it, he deserves it not from me.
“Then shall the unpunish’d wretch insult the slain,
Triumphant live, nor only live, but reign;
While you, thin shades, the sport of winds, are toss’d
O’er dreary plains, or tread the burning coast.
I cannot, cannot bear; ’tis past, ’tis done;
Perish this impious, this detested son;
Perish his sire, and perish I withal,
And let the house’s heir and the hoped kingdom fall.
“Where is the mother fled, her pious love,
And where the pains, with which ten months I strove?
Ah! hadst thou died, my son, in infant years,
Thy little hearse had been bedew’d with tears.
“Thou liv’st by me, to me thy breath resign,
Mine is the merit, the demerit thine;
Thy life, by double title, I require,
Once given at birth, and once preserved from fire:
One murder pay, or add one murder more,
And me to them, who fell by thee, restore.
“I would, but cannot, my son’s image stands
Before my sight, and now their angry hands
My brothers hold, and vengeance these exact,
This pleads compassion, and repents the fact.
“He pleads in vain, and I pronounce his doom,
My brothers, though unjustly, shall o’ercome;
But having paid their injured ghosts their due,
My son requires my death, and mine shall his pursue.”
At this, for the last time, she lifts her hand,
Averts her eyes, and, half unwilling, drops the brand.
The brand, amid the flaming fuel thrown,
Or drew, or seem’d to draw, a dying groan;
The fires themselves but faintly lick’d their prey,
Then loathed their impious food, and would have shrunk away.
Just then the hero cast a doleful cry,
And in those absent flames began to fry;
The blind contagion raged within his veins,
But he with manly patience bore his pains:
He fear’d not fate, but only grieved to die
Without an honest wound, and by a death so dry.
“Happy Ancaeus,” thrice aloud he cried,
“With what becoming fate in arms he died!”
Then call’d his brothers, sisters, sire, around,
And her to whom his nuptial vows were bound,
Perhaps his mother; a long sigh he drew,
And, his voice failing, took his last adieu;
For as the flames augment, and as they stay
At their full height, then languish to decay,
They rise and sink by fits, at last they soar
In one bright blaze, and then descend no more;
Just so his inward heats, at height, impair,
Till the last burning breath shoots out the soul in air.
Now lofty Calydon in ruins lies,
All ages, all degrees, unsluice their eyes:
And heaven and earth resound with murmurs, groans, and cries;
Matrons and maidens beat their breasts, and tear
Their habits, and root up their scatter’d hair;
The wretched father, father now no more,
With sorrow sunk, lies prostrate on the floor,
Deforms his hoary locks with dust obscene,
And curses age, and loathes a life prolong’d with pain;
By steel her stubborn soul his mother freed,
And punish’d on herself her impious deed.
Had I a hundred tongues, a wit so large
As could their hundred offices discharge—
Had Phoebus all his Helicon bestow’d
In all the streams, inspiring all the god,
Those tongues, that wit, those streams, that god in vain
Would offer to describe his sisters’ pain;
They beat their breasts with many a bruising blow,
Till they turn livid, and corrupt the snow;
The corpse they cherish, while the corpse remains,
And exercise and rub, with fruitless pains;
And when to funeral flames ’tis borne away,
They kiss the bed on which the body lay;
And when those funeral flames no longer burn
(The dust composed within a pious urn),
Ev’n in that urn their brother they confess,
And hug it in their arms, and to their bosoms press.
His tomb is raised; then, stretch’d along the ground,
Those living monuments his tomb surround;
Ev’n to his name, inscribed, their
