In a trance she moves; round her a void space. Awed as if at Death’s halo on Youth’s grace, Warriors shrink as on the Princess comes, Abashed to look their victim in the face. A priest’s touch—the tresses in which maids bind Their waving hair have found themselves confined By a sacrificial fillet, the ends Circling each cheek, and flowing down behind. She wakes. Flash on her soul—the Fleet’s delay— Her Mother’s despair as she went her way— The wrath of Artemis, Her gory rites— Basilisk glance as Calchas passed that day! And her sire—not once to have turned and smiled Upon his best beloved, his first-born child— The gleam from a ray on a Thing ill veiled— And a swell of sobs that could not be stilled! Her knees fail her; and how not? how sustain The horror! her father to will to stain His dagger with her blood! to breathe beneath A load of inextinguishable pain! So, shed Iphianassa her pure life, Borne in shuddering arms to a Sire’s knife: Printing with chaste blood incestuous stains, Re-dyed later by a foul, vengeful wife! The whole to verify a priest’s surmise, Prove privity with Heav’n in vulgar eyes! No matter how Gods’ credit was abused, Or sweet innocence sacrificed to lies. Maternal Love Bk. II. vv. 342-380 Admire how Nature, with her jealous care For purity in kind, still schemes to pair Mother and child by features that forbid Confusion in the common home all share. Members of a kind insomuch agree; Yet each is itself; whence diversity. Mutual recognition rests on that; Family ties without it could not be. No human convention; dumb cattle can Be sure where love is due, no less than Man. An universal instinct—and, for guide, A sense of differences—Nature’s plan. A calf may its innocent life resign On the altar before some stately shrine, Shedding a flood of warm blood ’mid the steam Of incense, and libations of red wine. And the Mother! in many a green glade She tracks the lost by prints his feet have made. Each spot she studies, in the fond belief The faith of love can never be gainsaid. Then, from the woods that her moans overflow, An impulse drives her to renew her woe At the stall, where a passionate regret, Piercing her heart, tosses her to and fro. Not willow saplings, dewy grass, nor sight Of brimming rivers, with, in warm noon light, Cool pools to stand in, banish pain and ache, Much less, yield an interval of delight. A calf at play impose on her belief! Be accepted as hers, and bring relief! Numberless signs attest it not her own; Both like and unlike aggravate her grief. ’Tis given not to flocks alone and herds To mark diversities, but wild beasts, birds, Joying in lonely groves, and streams, and lakes, Even fish that understand without words,