HKB
Whereat the seer, by stubborn force constrained, Shot forth the grey light of his gleaming eyes Upon him, and with fiercely gnashing teeth Unlocks his lips to spell the fates of heaven: "Doubt not 'tis wrath divine that plagues thee thus, Nor light the debt thou payest; 'tis Orpheus' self, Orpheus unhappy by no fault of his, So fates prevent not, fans thy penal fires, Yet madly raging for his ravished bride. She in her haste to shun thy hot pursuit Along the stream, saw not the coming death, Where at her feet kept ward upon the bank In the tall grass a monstrous water-snake. But with their cries the Dryad-band her peers Filled up the mountains to their proudest peaks: Wailed for her fate the heights of Rhodope, And tall Pangaea, and, beloved of Mars, The land that bowed to Rhesus, Thrace no less With Hebrus' stream; and Orithyia wept, Daughter of Acte old. But Orpheus' self, Soothing his love-pain with the hollow shell, Thee his sweet wife on the lone shore alone, Thee when day dawned and when it died he sang. Nay to the jaws of Taenarus too he came, Of Dis the infernal palace, and the grove Grim with a horror of great darkness- came, Entered, and faced the Manes and the King Of terrors, the stone heart no prayer can tame. Then from the deepest deeps of Erebus, Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour Or storms of winter chase them from the hills; Matrons and men, and great heroic frames Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls, Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes. Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed, Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp Of dull dead water, and, to pen them fast, Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between. Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death Stood lost in wonderment, and the Eumenides, Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined; Even Cerberus held his triple jaws agape, And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still. And now with homeward footstep he had passed All perils scathless, and, at length restored, Eurydice to realms of upper air Had well-nigh won, behind him following- So Proserpine had ruled it- when his heart A sudden mad desire surprised and seized- Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive. For at the very threshold of the day, Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve, He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice His own once more. But even with the look, Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard Three times like thunder in the meres of hell. 'Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep Closes my swimming eyes. And now farewell: Girt with enormous night I am borne away, Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas!