Men and Women

Artemis Prologizes

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1842

I am a goddess of the ambrosia courts,

And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassed

By none whose temples whiten this the world.

Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along;

I shed in hell o'er my pale people peace;

On earth I, caring for the creatures, guard

Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-b***h sleek,

And every feathered mother's callow brood,

And all that love green haunts and loneliness.

Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns 10

Of poppies red to blackness, bell and stem,

Upon my image at Athenai here;

And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above,

Was dearest to me. He, my buskined step

To follow through the wild-wood leafy ways,

And chase the panting stag, or swift with darts

Stop the swift ounce, or lay the leopard low,

Neglected homage to another god:

Whence Aphrodite, by no midnight smoke

Of tapers lulled, in jealousy despatched 20

A noisome lust that, as the gad bee stings,

Possessed his stepdame Phaidra for himself

The son of Theseus her great absent spouse.

Hippolutos exclaiming in his rage

Against the fury of the Queen, she judged

Life insupportable; and, pricked at heart

An Amazonian stranger's race should dare

To scorn her, perished by the murderous cord:

Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scroll

The fame of him her swerving made not swerve. 30

And Theseus, read, returning, and believed,

And exiled, in the blindness of his wrath,

The man without a crime who, last as first,

Loyal, divulged not to his sire the truth,

Now Theseus from Poseidon had obtained

That of his wishes should be granted three,

And one he imprecated straight--"Alive

May ne'er Hippolutos reach other lands!"

Poseidon heard, ai ai! And scarce the prince

Had stepped into the fixed boots of the car 40

That give the feet a stay against the strength

Of the Henetian horses, and around

His body flung the rein, and urged their speed

Along the rocks and shingles at the shore,

When from the gaping wave a monster flung

His obscene body in the coursers' path.

These, mad with terror, as the sea-bull sprawled

Wallowing about their feet, lost care of him

That reared them; and the master-chariot-pole

Snapping beneath their plunges like a reed, 50

Hippolutos, whose feet were trammelled fast,

Was yet dragged forward by the circling rein

Which either hand directed; nor they quenched

The frenzy of their flight before each trace,

Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woful car,

Each boulder-stone, sharp stub and spiny shell,

Huge fish-bone wrecked and wreathed amid the sands

On that detested beach, was bright with blood

And morsels of his flesh; then fell the steeds

Head foremost, crashing in their mooned fronts, 60

Shivering with sweat, each white eye horror-fixed.

His people, who had witnessed all afar,

Bore back the ruins of Hippolutos.

But when his sire, too swoln with pride, rejoiced

(Indomitable as a man foredoomed)

That vast Poseidon had fulfilled his prayer,

I, in a flood of glory visible,

Stood o'er my dying votary and, deed

By deed, revealed, as all took place, the truth.

Then Theseus lay the wofullest of men, 70

And worthily; but ere the death-veils hid

His face, the murdered prince full pardon breathed

To his rash sire. Whereat Athenai wails.

So I, who ne'er forsake my votaries,

Lest in the cross-way none the honey-cake

Should tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life;

Lest at my fane the priests disconsolate

Should dress my image with some faded poor

Few crowns, made favors of, nor dare object

Such slackness to my worshippers who turn 80

Elsewhere the trusting heart and loaded hand,

As they had climbed Olumpos to report

Of Artemis and nowhere found her throne--

I interposed: and, this eventful night

(While round the funeral pyre the populace

Stood with fierce light on their black robes which bound

Each sobbing head, while yet their hair they clipped

O'er the dead body of their withered prince,

And, in his palace, Theseus prostrated

On the cold hearth, his brow cold as the slab 90

'T was bruised on, groaned away the heavy grief--

As the pyre fell, and down the cross logs crashed

Sending a crowd of sparkles through the night,

And the gay fire, elate with mastery,

Towered like a serpent o'er the clotted jars

Of wine, dissolving oils and frankincense,

And splendid gums like gold) my potency

Conveyed the perished man to my retreat

In the thrice-venerable forest here.

And this white-bearded sage who squeezes now 100

The berried plant, is Phoibos' son of fame,

Asclepios, whom my radiant brother taught

The doctrine of each herb and flower and root,

To know their secret'st virtue and express

The saving soul of all: who so has soothed

With layers the torn brow and murdered cheeks,

Composed the hair and brought its gloss again,

And called the red bloom to the pale skin back,

And laid the strips and lagged ends of flesh

Even once more, and slacked the sinew's knot 110

Of every tortured limb--that now he lies

As if mere sleep possessed him underneath

These interwoven oaks and pines. Oh cheer,

Divine presenter of the healing rod,

Thy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye,

Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer!

Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies!

And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs,

Ply, as the sage directs, these buds and leaves

That strew the turf around the twain! While I 120

Await, in fitting silence, the event.

NOTES

"Artemis Prologizes" represents the goddess Artemis awaiting the

revival of the youth Hippolytus, whom she has carried to her woods

and given to Asclepios to heal. It is a fragment meant to introduce

an unwritten work and carry on the story related by Euripides in

"Hippolytus," which see.

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