To Orcus hence, away! Seek thou thy kindred there!
THIRD CHORISTER
Who yonder dwell, in sooth, for thee are far too young.
PHORKYAS
Tiresias, the h.o.a.ry, go, make love to him!
FOURTH CHORISTER
Orion"s nurse of old, was thy great-grand-daughter.
PHORKYAS
Harpies, so I suspect, did rear thee up in filth.
FIFTH CHORISTER
Thy cherished meagreness, whereon dost nourish that?
PHORKYAS
"Tis not with blood, for which so keenly thou dost thirst.
SIXTH CHORISTER
For corpses dost thou hunger, loathsome corpse thyself!
PHORKYAS
Within thy shameless jaw the teeth of vampires gleam.
SEVENTH CHORISTER
Thine I should stop were I to tell thee who thou art.
PHORKYAS
First do thou name thyself; the riddle then is solved.
HELENA
Not wrathful, but in grief, step I between you now, Forbidding such alternate quarrel"s angry noise; For to the ruler naught more hurtful can befall, Than, "mong his trusty servants, sworn and secret strife; The echo of his mandate then to him no more In swift accomplished deed responsively returns; No, stormful and self-will"d, it rages him around, The self-bewilder"d one, and chiding still in vain.
Nor this alone; ye have in rude unmanner"d wrath Unblessed images of dreadful shapes evoked, Which so encompa.s.s me, that whirl"d I feel myself To Orcus down, despite these my ancestral fields.
Is it remembrance? Was it frenzy seized on me?
Was I all that? and am I? shall I henceforth be The dread and phantom-shape of those town-wasting ones?
The maidens quail: but thou, the eldest, thou dost stand, Calm and unmoved; speak, then, to me some word of sense!
PHORKYAS
Who of long years recalls the fortune manifold, To him heaven"s highest favor seems at last a dream.
But thou, so highly favored, past all bound or goal, Saw"st, in thy life-course, none but love-inflamed men, Kindled by impulse rash to boldest enterprise.
Theseus by pa.s.sion stirred full early seized on thee, A man of glorious form, and strong as Heracles.
HELENA
Forceful he bore me off, a ten-year slender roe, And in Aphidnus" keep shut me, in Attica.
PHORKYAS
But thence full soon set free, by Castor, Pollux too, In marriage wast thou sought by chosen hero-band.
HELENA
Yet hath Patroclus, he, Pelides" other self, My secret favor won, as willingly I own.
PHORKYAS
But thee thy father hath to Menelaus wed, Bold rover of the sea, and house-sustainer too.
HELENA
His daughter gave he, gave to him the kingdom"s sway; And from our wedded union sprang Hermione.
PHORKYAS
But while he strove afar, for Crete, his heritage, To thee, all lonely, came an all too beauteous guest.
HELENA
Wherefore the time recall of that half-widowhood, And what destruction dire to me therefrom hath grown!
PHORKYAS
That voyage unto me, a free-born dame of Crete, Hath also capture brought, and weary servitude.
HELENA
As stewardess forthwith, he did appoint thee here, With much intrusted,--fort and treasure boldly won.
PHORKYAS
All which thou didst forsake, by Ilion"s tower-girt town Allured, and by the joys, the exhaustless joys of love.
HELENA
Remind me not of joys: No, an infinitude Of all too bitter woe o"erwhelm"d my heart and brain.