IO. I know not how I should mistrust your prayer; Therefore the whole that ye desire of me Ye now shall learn in one straightforward tale. Yet, as it leaves my lips, I blush with shame To tell that tempest of the spite of Heaven, And all the wreck and ruin of my form, And whence they swooped upon me, woe is me! Long, long in visions of the night there came Voices and forms into my maiden bower, Alluring me with smoothly glozing words— _O maiden highly favoured of high Heaven, Why cherish thy virginity so long? Thine is it to win wedlock’s noblest crown! Know that Zeus’ heart thro’ thee is all aflame, Pierced with desire as with a dart, and longs To join in utmost rite of love with thee. Therefore, O maiden, shun not with disdain_ _Th’ embrace of Zeus, but hie thee forth straightway To the lush growth of Lerna’s meadow-land, Where are the flocks and steadings of thy home, And let Zeus’ eye be eased of its desire_. Night after night, haunted by dreams like these, Heartsick, I ventured at the last to tell Unto my sire these visions of the dark. Then sent he many a wight, on sacred quest, To Delphi and to far Dodona’s shrine, Being fall fain to learn what deed or word Would win him favour from the powers of heaven. But they came back repeating oracles Mystic, ambiguous, inscrutable, Till, at the last, an utterance direct, Obscure no more, was brought to Inachus— A peremptory charge to fling me forth Beyond my home and fatherland, a thing Sent loose in banishment o’er all the world; And—should he falter—Zeus should launch on him A fire-eyed bolt, to shatter and consume Himself and all his race to nothingness. Bowing before such utterance from the shrine Of Loxias, he drave me from our halls, Barring the gates against me: loth he was To do, as I to suffer, this despite: But the strong curb of Zeus had overborne His will to me-ward. As I parted thence, In form and mind I grew dishumanized, And horned as now ye see me, poison-stung By the envenomed bitings of the brize, I leapt and flung in frenzy, rushed away To the bright waters of Cerchneia’s stream And Lerna’s beach: but ever at my side, A herdsman by his heifer, Argus moved, Earth-born, malevolent of mood, and peered, With myriad eyes, where’er my feet would roam. But on him in a moment, unforeseen, Came Fate, and sundered him from life; but I, Still maddened by the gadfly’s sting, the scourge Of God’s infliction, roam the weary world. How I have fared, thou hearest: be there aught Of what remains to bear, that thou canst tell, Speak on! but let not thy compassion warm Thy words to cheering falsehood. Worst of woes Are words that break their promise to our hope!