The power of Bacchus now o’er Thebes had flown:
With awful reverence soon the god they own.
Proud Ino all around the wonder tells,
And on her nephew deity still dwells.
Of numerous sisters, she alone yet knew
No grief, but grief which she from sisters drew.
Imperial Juno saw her with disdain
Vain in her offspring, in her consort vain,
Who ruled the trembling Thebans with a nod,
But saw her vainest in her foster-god.
“Could then,” she cried, “a bastard boy have power
To make a mother her own son devour?
Could he the Tuscan crew to fishes change,
And now three sisters damn to forms so strange?
Yet shall the wife of Jove find no relief?
Shall she still unrevenged disclose her grief?
Have I the mighty freedom to complain?
Is that my power? Is that to ease my pain?
A foe has taught me vengeance; and who ought
To scorn that vengeance which a foe has taught?
What sure destruction frantic rage can throw,
The gaping wounds of slaughter’d Pentheus show.
Why should not Ino, fired with madness, stray,
Like her mad sisters her own kindred slay?
Why she not follow where they lead the way?”
Down a steep yawning cave where yews display’d
In arches meet, and lend a baleful shade,
Through silent labyrinths a passage lies
To mournful regions and infernal skies.
Here Styx exhales its noisome clouds, and here,
The funeral rites once paid, all souls appear,
Stiff, cold; and horror, with a ghastly face,
And staring eyes, infests the dreary place.
Ghosts, new-arrived, and strangers to these plains,
Know not the palace where grim Pluto reigns;
They journey doubtful, nor the road can tell,
Which leads to the metropolis of hell.
A thousand avenues those towers command,
A thousand gates for ever open stand.
As all the rivers, disembogued, find room
For all their waters in old Ocean’s womb,
So this vast city worlds of shades receives,
And space for millions still of worlds she leaves.
The unbodied spectres freely rove, and show
Whate’er they loved on earth they love below:
The lawyers still, or right or wrong support,
The courtiers smoothly glide to Pluto’s court,
Still airy heroes thoughts of glory fire,
Still the dead poet strings his deathless lyre,
And lovers still with fancied darts expire.
The queen of heaven, to gratify her hate,
And sooth immortal wrath, forgets her state;
Down from the realms of day to realms of night,
The goddess swift precipitates her flight.
At hell arrived, the noise hell’s porter heard,
The enormous dog his triple head uprear’d:
Thrice from three grisly throats he howl’d profound,
Then suppliant couch’d, and stretch’d along the ground.
The trembling threshold, which Saturnia press’d,
The weight of such divinity confess’d.
Before a lofty adamantine gate,
Which closed a tower of brass, the Furies sate;
Misshapen forms, tremendous to the sight,
The implacable foul daughters of the night.
A sounding whip each bloody sister shakes,
Or from her tresses combs the curling snakes.
But now great Juno’s majesty was known;
Through the thick gloom all heavenly bright she shone;
The hideous monsters their obedience show’d,
And, rising from their seats, submissive bow’d.
This is the place of wo, here groan the dead:
Huge Tityus o’er nine acres here is spread:
Fruitful for pain the immortal liver breeds,
Still grows, and still the insatiate vulture feeds:
Poor Tantalus to taste the water tries,
But from his lips the faithless water flies:
Then thinks the bending tree he can command;
The tree starts backwards, and eludes his hand:
The labour too of Sisyphus is vain;
Up the steep mount he heaves the stone with pain,
Down from the summit rolls the stone again:
The Belides their leaky vessels still
Are ever filling, and yet never fill;
Doom’d to this punishment for blood they shed,
For bridegrooms slaughter’d in the bridal bed;
Stretch’d on the rolling wheel Ixion lies;
Himself he follows, and himself he flies.
Ixion, tortured, Juno sternly eyed,
Then turn’d, and toiling Sisyphus espied:
“And why,” she said, “so wretched is the fate
Of him, whose brother proudly reigns in state?
Yet still my altars unadored have been
By Athamas and his presumptuous queen.”
What caused her hate, the goddess thus confess’d,
What caused her journey now was more than guess’d,
That hate, relentless, its revenge did want,
And that revenge the Furies soon could grant:
They could the glory of proud Thebes efface,
And hide in ruin the Cadmean race.
For this she largely promises, entreats,
And to entreaties adds imperial threats.
Then fell Tisiphone with rage was stung,
And from her mouth the untwisted serpents flung.
“To gain this trifling boon, there is no need,”
She cried, “in formal speeches to proceed.
Whatever thou command’st to do is done;
Believe it finish’d, though not yet begun.
But from these melancholy seats repair
To happier mansions, and to purer air.”
She spoke. The goddess, darting upwards, flies,
And joyous reascends her native skies:
Nor enter’d there, till round her Iris threw
Ambrosial sweets, and pour’d celestial dew.
The faithful fury, guiltless of delays,
With cruel haste the dire command obeys.
Girt in a bloody gown, a torch she shakes,
And round her neck twines speckled wreaths of snakes.
Fear, and dismay, and agonizing pain,
With frantic rage, complete her loveless train.
To Thebes her flight she sped, and hell forsook;
At her approach the Theban turrets shook;
The sun shrunk back, thick clouds the day o’ercast,
And springing greens were wither’d as she pass’d.
Now, dismal yellings heard, strange spectre seen,
Confound as much the monarch as the queen.
In vain to quit the palace they prepared,
Tisiphone was there, and kept the ward.
She wide extended her unfriendly arms,
And all the fury lavish’d all her harms,
Part of her tresses loudly hiss, and part
Spread poison, as their forky tongues they dart:
Then from her middle locks two snakes she drew,
Whose merit from superior mischief grew:
The envenom’d ruin, thrown with spiteful care,
Clung to the bosoms of the hapless pair.
The hapless pair soon with wild thoughts were fired,
And madness by a thousand ways inspired.
’Tis true, the unwounded body still was sound,
But ’twas the soul which felt the deadly wound.
Nor did the unsated monster here give o’er,
But dealt of plagues a fresh unnumber’d store.
Each baneful juice too well she understood,
Foam churn’d by Cerberus, and Hydra’s blood.
Hot hemlock and cold aconite she chose,
Delighted in variety of woes.
Whatever can untune the harmonious soul,
And its mild reas’ning faculties control,
Give false ideas, raise desires profane,
And whirl in eddies the tumultuous brain,
Mix’d with cursed art, she direfully around
Through all their nerves diffused the sad compound;
Then toss’d her torch in circles still the same,
Improved their rage, and added flame to flame.
The grinning fury her own conquest spied,
And to her rueful shades return’d with pride,
And threw the exhausted useless snakes aside.
Now Athamas cries out, his reason fled,
“Here, fellow-hunters, let the toils be spread.
I saw a lioness, in quest of food,
With her two young, run roaring in this wood.”
Again the fancied savages were seen,
As through his palace still he chased his queen;
Then tore Learchus from her breast: the child
Stretch’d little arms, and on its father smiled:
A father now no more, who now begun
Around his head to whirl his giddy son,
And, quite insensible to nature’s call,
The helpless infant flung against the wall.
The same mad poison in the mother wrought:
Young Melicerta in her arms she caught,
And with disorder’d tresses, howling, flies,
“O! Bacchus, Evoe, Bacchus!” loud she cries.
The name of Bacchus Juno laugh’d to hear,
And said, “Thy foster-god has cost thee dear.”
A rock there stood, whose side the beating waves
Had long consumed, and hollow’d into caves;
The head shot forwards in a bending steep,
And cast a dreadful covert o’er the deep.
The wretched Ino, on destruction bent,
Climb’d up the cliff, such strength her fury lent,
Thence with her guiltless boy, who wept in vain,
At one bold spring she plunged into the main.
Her niece’s fate touch’d Cytherea’s breast,
And in soft sounds she Neptune thus address’d:
“Great god of waters, whose extended sway
Is next to his whom heaven and earth obey,
Let not the suit of Venus thee displease,
Pity the floaters on the Ionian seas.
Increase thy subject-gods, nor yet disdain
To add my kindred to that glorious train.
If from the sea I may such honours claim,
If ’tis desert that from the sea I came,
As Grecian poets artfully have sung,
And in the name confess’d from whence I sprung.”
Pleased Neptune nodded his assent, and free
Both soon became from frail mortality.
He gave them form, and majesty divine,
And bade them glide along the foamy brine.
For Melicerta is Palaemon known,
And Ino once, Leucothoe is grown.