“O mother Ida, many-fountain’d Ida. Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. Idalian Aphrodite, beautiful, Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian[16] wells, With rosy slender fingers backward drew From her warm brows and bosom[17] her deep hair Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat And shoulder: from the violets her light foot Shone rosy-white, and o’er her rounded form Between the shadows of the vine-bunches Floated the glowing sunlights, as she moved. “Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. She with a subtle smile in her mild eyes, The herald of her triumph, drawing nigh Half-whisper’d in his ear, ‘I promise thee The fairest and most loving wife in Greece’. She spoke and laugh’d: I shut my sight for fear: But when I look’d, Paris had raised his arm, And I beheld great Herè’s angry eyes, As she withdrew into the golden cloud, And I was left alone within the bower; And from that time to this I am alone, And I shall be alone until I die. “Yet, mother Ida, harken ere I die. Fairest—why fairest wife? am I not fair? My love hath told me so a thousand times. Methinks I must be fair, for yesterday, When I past by, a wild and wanton pard, Eyed like the evening star, with playful tail Crouch’d fawning in the weed. Most loving is she? Ah me, my mountain shepherd, that my arms Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest Close, close to thine in that quick-falling dew Of fruitful kisses, thick as Autumn rains Flash in the pools of whirling Simois. “O mother, hear me yet before I die. They came, they cut away my tallest pines, My dark tall pines, that plumed the craggy ledge High over the blue gorge, and all between The snowy peak and snow-white cataract Foster’d the callow eaglet—from beneath Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn The panther’s roar came muffled, while I sat Low in the valley. Never, never more Shall lone Œnone see the morning mist Sweep thro’ them; never see them overlaid With narrow moon-lit slips of silver cloud, Between the loud stream and the trembling stars. “O mother, here me yet before I die. I wish that somewhere in the ruin’d folds, Among the fragments tumbled from the glens, Or the dry thickets, I could meet with her, The Abominable,[18] that uninvited came Into the fair Peleïan banquet-hall, And cast the golden fruit upon the board, And bred this change; that I might speak my mind, And tell her to her face how much I hate Her presence, hated both of Gods and men.