All sad and slow I pour the moral strain:
Chang'd from that melting vein,
When the light mellifluous measure
Round thy bath, and round thy bed
For our sea-nymph sister spread,
Awoke young love and bridal pleasure,
And pour'd the soul of harmony,
To greet the bright Hesione.
IO, PROMETHEUS, CHORUS.
Whither, ah whither am I borne[1]!
To what rude shore, what barb'rous race? O thou,
Whoe'er thou art, that chain'd to that bleak rock,
The seat of desolation, ruest thy crimes,
Say on what shore my wretched footsteps stray.—
Again that sting!—Ah me, that form again !—
With all his hundred eyes the earth-born Argus—
Cover it, Earth ! See, how it glares upon me,
The horrid spectre—Wilt thou not, O Earth,
Cover the dead, that from thy dark abyss
He comes to haunt me, to pursue my steps,
And drive me foodless o'er the barren strand?
Hoarse sounds the reed-compacted pipe[2], a note
- ↑ The poet here introduces to us the most singular and illustrious personage of ancient Greece, from whom the noblest families were proud of deriving their pedigree; the bare mention of her was a compliment to their vanity and therefore always well accepted; it had a peculiar propriety here, as it prepared the Athenian spectator to receive her great descendant Hercules, who was to appear in the next play, which unhappily is lost. In the Supplicants we shall have occasion to speak more particularly of her.
- ↑ So Ovid seems to have understaod this passage,
———junctisque canendo
Vincere arundinibus servantia lumina tentat.
