Orpheus

Alas, the will flies ere the power began. Lo, in the Idan grove Invoking Zeus to swell the power of Pan, The prayer discomfits the demented man! Lust lies as still as love. Therefore in memory only is there life, And in sweet shapes of art: The same thought for the ointment and the knife— Oh lightning! blast the image of my wife _ Out of my mind and heart! How can one hour dissolve a year’s delight ? One arrow striking the full eagle-flight Drop him so swift, giving no time to die, No dusk to herald and delay the night? A serpent stung her sleeping: if the abyss ‘Know any cell more dolorous than this, Were there a sharper tooth to destiny Than this that strikes me in the dead girl’s kiss :— O if aught bitterer could be, could know, If nine-fold Styx could gather in its flow Cocytus, Phlegethon, and Acheron, All mixed to one full flood of hate and woe: And poisoned by all venom like to his Who kissed Eurydice the traitor-kiss :-— Then let them sting me fourfold, nor atone Then for the eightfold misery of this! 120