To Thebes the neighb’ring princes all repair,
And with condolence the misfortune share.
Each bord’ring state in solemn form address’d,
And each, betimes, a friendly grief express’d;
Argos, with Sparta’s and Mycenae’s towns,
And Calydon, yet free from fierce Diana’s frowns;
Corinth for finest brass well famed of old;
Orchomenos for men of courage bold;
Cleonae lying in the lowly dale;
And rich Messene with its fertile vale;
Pylos for Nestor’s city after famed;
And Troezen, not as yet from Pittheus named;
And those fair cities, which are hemm’d around
By double seas within the Isthmian ground;
And those which farther from the seacoast stand,
Lodged in the bosom of the spacious land.
Who can believe it? Athens was the last,
Though for politeness famed for ages past:
For a strait siege, which then their walls enclosed,
Such acts of kind humanity opposed:
And thick with ships, from foreign nations bound,
Seaward their city lay invested round.
These, with auxiliar forces led from far,
Tereus of Thrace, brave, and inured to war,
Had quite defeated, and obtain’d a name,
The warrior’s due, among the sons of fame.
This, with his wealth, and power, and ancient line,
From Mars derived, Pandion’s thoughts incline
His daughter Procne with the prince to join.
Nor Hymen, nor the Graces, here preside,
Nor Juno, to befriend the blooming bride;
But fiends with funeral brands the process led,
And furies waited at the genial bed;
And, all night long, the screeching owl aloof,
With baleful notes, sat brooding o’er the roof.
With such ill omens was the match begun,
That made them parents of a hopeful son.
Now Thrace congratulates their seeming joy,
And they, in thankful rites, their minds employ:
If the fair queen’s espousals pleased before,
Itys, the newborn prince, now pleases more;
And each bright day the birth and bridal feast
Were kept with hallow’d pomp above the rest.
So far true happiness may lie conceal’d,
When, by false lights, we fancy ’tis reveal’d!
Now, since their nuptials, had the golden sun
Five courses round his ample zodiac run,
When gentle Procne thus her lord address’d,
And spoke the secret wishes of her breast:
“If I,” she said, “have ever favour found,
Let my petition with success be crown’d.
Let me at Athens my dear sister see;
Or, let her come to Thrace and visit me;
And, lest my father should her absence mourn,
Promise that she shall make a quick return.
With thanks I’d own the obligation due,
Only, O Tereus, to the gods and you.”
Now, plied with oar and sail at his command,
The nimble galleys reach’d the Athenian land,
And anchor’d in the famed Piraean bay,
While Tereus to the palace takes his way;
The king salutes, and, ceremonies pass’d,
Begins the fatal embassy at last:
The occasion of his voyage he declares,
And, with his own, his wife’s request prefers;
Asks leave that, only for a little space,
Their lovely sister might embark for Thrace.
Thus, while he spoke, appear’d the royal maid,
Bright Philomela, splendidly array’d;
But most attractive in her charming face,
And comely person, turn’d with ev’ry grace:
Like those fair nymphs that are described to rove
Across the glades and op’nings of the grove;
Only that these are dress’d for sylvan sports,
And less become the finery of courts.
Tereus beheld the virgin, and admired,
And with the coals of burning love was fired;
Like crackling stubble, or the summer hay,
When forked lightnings o’er the meadows play.
Such charms in any breast might kindle love,
But him the heats of inbred passion move,
To which, though Thrace is naturally prone,
Yet his is still superior, and his own.
Straight her attendants he designs to buy,
And with large bribes her governess would try;
Herself with ample gifts resolves to bend,
And his whole kingdom in the attempt expend;
Or, snatch’d away, by force of arms to bear,
And justify the act with open war.
The boundless passion boils within his breast,
And his projecting soul admits no rest.
And now, impatient of the least delay,
By pleading Procne’s cause, he speeds his way:
The eloquence of love his tongue inspires,
And, in his wife’s, he speaks his own desires;
Hence all his importunities arise,
And tears unmanly trickle from his eyes.
Ye gods! what thick involving darkness blinds
The stupid faculties of mortal minds!
Tereus the credit of good-nature gains
From these his crimes; so well the villain feigns,
And, unsuspecting of his base designs,
In the request fair Philomela joins;
Her snowy arms her aged sire embrace,
And clasp his neck with an endearing grace:
Only to see her sister she entreats,
A seeming blessing, which a curse completes.
Tereus surveys her with a luscious eye,
And in his mind forestalls the blissful joy:
Her circling arms a scene of love inspire,
And ev’ry kiss foments the raging fire.
Fondly he wishes for the father’s place,
To feel, and to return, the warm embrace;
Since not the nearest ties of filial blood
Would damp his flame, and force him to be good.
At length, for both their sakes, the king agrees;
And Philomela, on her bended knees,
Thanks him for what her fancy calls success,
When cruel Fate intends her nothing less.
Now Phoebus, hast’ning to ambrosial rest,
His fiery steeds drove sloping down the west;
The sculptured gold with sparkling wines was fill’d,
And, with rich meats, each cheerful table smiled.
Plenty and mirth the royal banquet close,
Then all retire to sleep and sweet repose.
But the amorous monarch, though withdrawn apart,
Still feels love’s poison rankling in his heart:
Her face divine is stamp’d within his breast,
Fancy imagines, and improves the rest:
And thus, kept waking by intense desire,
He nourishes his own prevailing fire.
Next day the good old king for Tereus sends,
And to his charge the virgin recommends:
His hand with tears the indulgent father press’d,
Then spoke, and thus with tenderness address’d:
“Since the kind instances of pious love
Do all pretence of obstacle remove:
Since Procne’s, and her own, with your request,
O’errule the fears of a paternal breast,
With you, dear son, my daughter I entrust,
And, by the gods, adjure you to be just;
By truth, and ev’ry consanguineal tie,
To watch and guard her with a father’s eye;
And, since the least delay will tedious prove,
In keeping from my sight the child I love,
With speed return her, kindly to assuage
The tedious troubles of my ling’ring age.
And you, my Philomel, let it suffice,
To know your sister’s banish’d from my eyes;
If any sense of duty sways your mind,
Let me from you the shortest absence find.”
He wept; then kiss’d his child; and while he speaks,
The tears fall gently down his aged cheeks.
Next, as a pledge of fealty, he demands,
And, with a solemn charge, conjoins their hands;
Then to his daughter and his grandson sends,
And by their mouth a blessing recommends;
While, in a voice with dire forebodings broke.
Sobbing and faint, the last farewell was spoke.
Now Philomela, scarce received on board,
And in the royal gilded bark secured,
Beheld the dashes of the bending oar,
The ruffled sea, and the receding shore,
When straight (his joy impatient of disguise)
“We’ve gain’d our point,” the rough barbarian cries;
“Now I possess the dear, the blissful hour,
And ev’ry wish subjected to my power.”
As when the bold rapacious bird of Jove,
With crooked talons, stooping from above,
Has snatch’d, and carried to his lofty nest
A captive hare, with cruel gripes oppress’d,
Secure, with fix’d and unrelenting eyes,
He sits, and views the helpless, trembling prize.
Their vessels now had made the intended land.
And all with joy descend upon the strand,
When the false tyrant seized the princely maid,
And to a lodge in distant woods convey’d;
Pale, sinking, and distress’d with jealous fears,
And, asking for her sister, all in tears.
The monster, on his purpose fully bent,
No longer now delay’d his base intent.
Her piercing accents to her sire complain,
And to her absent sister, but in vain;
In vain she importunes, with doleful cries,
Each unattentive godhead of the skies.
She pants and trembles like the bleating prey,
From some close-hunted wolf just snatch’d away,
That still with fearful horror looks around,
And on its flank regards the bleeding wound:
Or, as the tim’rous dove, the danger o’er,
Beholds her shining plumes besmear’d with gore;
And though deliver’d from the falcon’s claw,
Yet shivers, and retains a secret awe.
But when her mind a calm reflection shared,
And all her scatter’d spirits were repaired,
Torn and disorder’d while her tresses hung,
Her livid hands, like one that mourn’d, she wrung,
Then thus, with grief o’erwhelmed her languid eyes:
“Savage, inhuman, cruel wretch!” she cries,
“Whom nor a parent’s strict commands could move,
Though charged and utter’d with the tears of love,
Nor virgin innocence, nor all that’s due
To the strong contract of the nuptial vow;
Virtue, by this, in wild confusion’s laid,
And I compelled to wrong my sister’s bed;
While you, regardless of your marriage oath,
With stains of incest have defiled us both.
Though I deserved some punishment to find,
This was, ye gods! too cruel and unkind.
Yet, villain, to complete your horrid guilt,
Stab here, and let my tainted blood be spilt.
O! happy, had it come before I knew
The cursed embrace of vile perfidious you;
Then, my pale ghost, pure from incestuous love,
Had wander’d spotless through the Elysian grove.
But, if the gods above have power to know,
And judge those actions that are done below,
Unless the dreaded thunders of the sky,
Like me, subdued, and violated lie,
Still my revenge shall take its proper time,
And suit the baseness of your hellish crime;
Myself abandon’d, and devoid of shame,
Through the wide world your actions will proclaim;
Or, though I’m prison’d in this lonely den,
Obscured and buried from the sight of men,
My mournful voice the pitying rocks shall move,
And my complainings echo through the grove.
Hear me, O Heaven! and, if a god be there,
Let him regard me, and accept my prayer.”
Struck with these words, the tyrant’s guilty breast
With fear and anger was by turns possess’d;
Now, with remorse his conscience deeply stung,
He drew the falchion that beside him hung,
And first her tender arms behind her bound,
Then dragg’d her by the hair along the ground.
The princess willingly her throat reclined,
And view’d the steel with a contented mind;
But soon her tongue the girding pincers strain,
With anguish, soon she feels the piercing pain:
“O father, father!” she would fain have spoke,
But the sharp torture her intention broke;
In vain she tries, for now the blade has cut
Her tongue sheer off, close to the trembling root;
The mangled part still quiver’d on the ground,
Murmuring with a faint, imperfect sound:
And, as a serpent writhes his wounded train,
Uneasy, panting, and possess’d with pain,
The piece, while life remain’d, still trembled fast,
And to its mistress pointed to the last.
The monarch ventures to his Procne’s sight;
Loaded with guilt, and cloyed with long delight;
There, with feign’d grief, and false dissembled sighs,
Begins a formal narrative of lies;
Her sister’s death he artfully declares,
Then weeps, and raises credit from his tears.
Her vest with flowers of gold embroider’d o’er,
With grief distress’d, the mournful matron tore,
And a beseeming suit of gloomy sable wore.
With cost, an honorary tomb she raised,
And thus the imaginary ghost appeased.
Deluded queen! the fate of her you love,
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 yourself your Itys you may find.”
Still at this puzzling answer, with surprise,
Around the room he sends his curious eyes;
And, as he still inquired, and call’d aloud,
Fierce Philomela, all besmeared with blood,
Her hands with murder stain’d, her spreading hair
Hanging dishevell’d, with a ghastly air
Stepp’d forth, and flung, full in the tyrant’s face,
The head of Itys, gory as it was:
Nor ever long’d so much to use her tongue,
And with a just reproach to vindicate her wrong.
The Thracian monarch from the table flings,
While with his cries the vaulted parlour rings:
His imprecations echo down to hell,
And rouse the snaky furies from their Stygian cell.
One while he labours to disgorge his breast,
And free his stomach from the cursed feast;
Then, weeping o’er his lamentable doom,
He styles himself his son’s sepulchral tomb.
Now, with drawn sabre and impetuous speed,
In close pursuit he drives Pandion’s breed,
Whose nimble feet spring with so swift a force
Across the fields, they seem to wing their course.
And now on real wings themselves they raise,
And steer their airy flight by different ways;
One to the woodland’s shady covert hies,
Around the smoky roof the other flies,
Whose feathers yet the marks of murder stain,
Where, stamp’d upon her breast, the crimson spots remain.
Tereus, through grief, and haste to be revenged,
Shares the like fate, and to a bird is changed:
Fix’d on his head the crested plumes appear,
Long is his beak, and sharpen’d like a spear:
Thus arm’d, his looks his inward mind display,
And, to a lapwing turn’d, he fans his way.
Exceeding trouble for his children’s fate,
Shorten’d Pandion’s days, and changed his date;
Down to the shades below, with sorrow spent,
An earlier, unexpected ghost he went.