See you that two-mouthed cavern? There
His rocky dwelling-place.
And where
Is the sad inmate of the grot?
I doubt not somewhere near the spot,
Gone forth in search of daily food,
Dragging his steps through wold or wood;
For so, ’tis said, by toilsome pains
A painful sustenance he gains,
Shooting whatever living thing
Comes within reach of his dread bow.
The years go by and never bring
A leach to heal his woe.
Strophe 2
O how piteous thy lot,
Luckless man, by man forgot;
None thy solitude to share,
None to tend with loving care;
Plagued and stricken by disease,
Never knowing hour of ease,
Facing death each moment, how
Hast, poor wretch, endured till now?
O the crooked ways of heaven!
Hapless men to whom are given
Lots so changeful, so uneven.
Antistrophe 2
He who with the best might vie,
Of our Grecian chivalry.
On a desert island left,
Perishes, of all bereft;
With the savage beasts doth dwell
Of spotted hide or shaggy fell;
Pangs of hunger doth endure,
Racked with aches that know no cure.
Echo, too, with babbling tongue,
As she sits her hills among,
Iterates in undertones
His interminable groans.
Nothing strange I see in this
By heaven ordained (if not amiss
I augur) comes this punishment,
By the unpitying Chrysè1 sent;
And what he suffers now must be
Designed by some wise deity,
Lest too soon ’gainst Troy should go
The arrows of his wizard bow,
For when the fated hour has come
By them must Troy-town find its doom.
Strophe 3
Hush, my son!
Wherefore?
Back.
Hist! there comes a sound
As of one sore afflicted. Is it here
Or here? ’Tis nearer now, I look around,
The footfall of a laboured tread grows clear;
And now, though distant still, I catch a cry
Distinct, the voice of human agony.
Antistrophe 3
Bethink thee, Prince.
Of what?
Some fresh device;
For now the man approaches very near.
This is no shepherd-swain who homeward hies,
No melody of pastoral pipe I hear;
But as he stumbles ’mid the jagged stones
He rends the air with far resounding groans,
Or as he eyes the sea without a sail,
He utters (hear his voice!) a hideous wail.
Sirs, who are ye and whence, who have landed here
Upon this harbourless and desolate shore?
What countrymen and of what race? If I
Might make conjecture by your garb and mien,
Ye are Greeks—a sight most welcome to my eyes;
But I would hear your voices. Shrink not back
In horror at my savage aspect; speak;
Pity a lonely, friendless, stricken man
Thus stranded; if indeed as friends ye come,
Make answer, I entreat ye; fair reply
I may expect from you, as you from me.
Well, I will answer first thy question, Sir;
Thou hast conjectured rightly, we are Greeks.
O welcome utterance! Ah, how good to hear
Those accents, long unheard, from one like thee!
What quest, my son, what venture brought thee here,
What breeze compelled thy canvas? Happy breeze!
Speak, tell me all, that I may know my friend.
My home’s the wave-lapped Scyros, and I sail
Homewards; my name is Neoptolemus,
My sire Achilles. Now thou knowest all.
Son of a sire most dear, and land most dear,
Old Lycomedes’ foster-child, what quest
Has brought thee hither, from what port didst sail?
Hither I sailed direct from Ilium.
From Ilium? Surely thou wast not on board
When first our expedition sailed for Troy.
What, wert thou partner in that enterprise?
Dost thou not know with whom thou speak’st, my son?
How should I know a man ne’er seen before?
Know’st thou not e’en my name? hast never heard
How I was wasting inch by inch away?
Of all thou questionest I nothing know.
O what a heaven-forsaken wretch am I,
Of whose disastrous plight no rumour yet
Hath reached my home or any Grecian land!
But they, the godless knaves who cast me forth,
Laugh and are mute. My malady the while
Rankles, and daily grows from bad to worse.
O boy, O son sprung from Achilles’ loins,
I am that man, of whom thou mayst have heard,
Heritor of the bow of Heracles,
The son of Poeas, Philoctetes, whom
The Atridae and the Cephallenian prince
Cast forth thus shamelessly, a derelict,
Plague-stricken, wasting slowly, marked for death
By a man-slaying serpent’s venomous fangs.
Thus plagued, my son, they left me here, what time
Their fleet from sea-girt Chrysè touched this shore.
Tired with long tossing I had fallen asleep
Beneath a rock upon the beach; they laughed
To see me witless, laughed and sailed away,
Flinging me, as they went, some cast-off rags,
A beggar’s alms, and scraps of food. God grant
That they may some day come to fare like me!
Picture, my son, when I awoke and found
All gone, what waking then was mine; what tears,
What lamentations, when I saw the ships
In which I sailed all vanished; not a soul
To share my solitude or tend my wound.
All ways I gazed and nothing found but pain,
Pain, and of pain, God wot, enow, my son.
So passed the crawling hours, day upon day,
Year after year. I shifted for myself
Beneath this homeless, solitary roof.
To sate my hunger with this bow I shot
The wingèd doves and ever when my bolt
Sped from the taut string to the mark, I crawled
Thither my lamed foot trailing painfully.
And if of water I had need, or when
In winter time the ground was hoar with frost,
And firewood must be fetched, forth would I creep
Somewise to compass this. I had no fire,
But from the hard rock striking flint on flint
Brought forth the hidden spark that keeps me alive.
For, look ye, a bare roof and fire withal
Serve all my needs, save healing of my sore.
Now let me tell thee of this isle, my son.
No mariner sails hither of his will,
For anchorage is none, nor mart whereat
He may find lodging and exchange his wares
For profit; prudent men sail not this way.
Yet a stray visitor—such accidents
Must happen in long years—puts in perforce.
From such, my son, when they do come, I get
Kind words of pity and perchance an alms
Of food or raiment, but at the first hint
Of passage home, they one and all refuse.
So here for ten long years I linger on,
Consumed with hunger, dying inch by inch;
Only the worm that gnaws me dieth not.
To the Atridae and Odysseus, boy,
I
