Sharp spears are blunted, steel is bent Against his heart; and glittering swords, Upon his naked members struck, In broken fragment drop apart; Stones strike, but harmlessly rebound. And so he scorns the deadly fates, 155 And, all invincible, provokes His death. No spears can pierce his heart, No arrow shot from Scythian bow, No darts which cold Sarmatians bear, Or they who dwell beneath the dawn, The Parthians, whose fatal shafts More deadly than the Cretan dart, 160 The neighboring Nabathaeans wound. Oechalia's walls he overthrew With his bare hands. Naught can withstand His onslaught. For whate'er he plans To overcome, is by that fact Already overcome. How few The foes who by his wounds have fallen! His angry countenance means death; 165 And to have met his threatening gaze Is worse than death. What Gyas huge, What vast Briareus, who stood Upon Thessalia's mountain heap And clutched at heaven with snaky hands, Would not have frozen at the glance Of that dread face? But mighty ills 170 Have mighty recompense: no more Is left to suffer--we have seen, Oh, woe! the angry Hercules! _Iole:_ But I, unhappy one, must mourn, Not temples with their gods o'erthrown, Not scattered hearths and burning homes, Where lie in common ruin mixed Fathers with sons, and gods with men, 175 Temples and towns--the common woe; But fortune calls my tears away To other grief. Fate bids me weep O'er other ruins. What lament 180 Shall I make first? What greatest ill Shall I bewail? All equally I'll weep. Ah me, that mother earth Hath not more bosoms given me, That worthily they might resound Unto my grief. But, O ye gods, Transform me to a weeping rock On Sipylus; or set me where, 185 Between its grassy banks, the Po Glides on, where grieving woods respond To the mourning of the sisters sad Of Phaëthon; or to the shores Of Sicily transport me. There, Another Siren, let me mourn 190 The woeful fate of Thessaly. Or bear me to the Thracian woods, Where, underneath Ismarian shade, The Daulian bird bewails her son. Give me a form to fit my tears, And let rough Trachin echo back 195 My cries of woe. The Cyprian maid Still soothes her grieving heart with tears; Still Ceyx's royal spouse bemoans Her vanished lord; and Niobe, Surviving life and grief, weeps on; Her human form has Philomel Escaped, and now with doleful notes The Attic maid bewails her dead. 200 Oh, that my arms were feathered wings! Oh, then, how happy would I be, When, hidden in the forest depths,