Certes, you did I snatch from midmost whirlpool of ruinDeadly, and held it cheap loss of a brother to sufferRather than fail your need (O false!) at hour the supremest.Therefore my limbs are doomed to be torn of birds, and of feralsPrey, nor shall upheapt Earth afford a grave to my body.Say me, what lioness bare you 'neath lone rock of the desert?What sea spued you conceived from out the spume of his surges!What manner Syrt, what ravening Scylla, what vasty Charybdis?you who for sweet life saved such meeds are lief of returning!If never willed your breast with me to mate you in marriage,Hating the savage law decreed by primitive parent,Still of your competence 'twas within your household to home me,Where I might serve as slave in gladsome service familiar,Laving your snow-white feet in clearest chrystalline watersOr with its purpling gear your couch in company strewing.Yet for what cause should I complain in vain to the winds that unknow me,(I so beside me with grief!) which ne'er of senses enduedHear not the words sent forth nor aught avail they to answer?Now be his course well-nigh engaged in midway of ocean,Nor any mortal shape appears in barrens of sea-wrack.Thus at the latest hour with insults over-sufficientE'en to my plaints fere Fate begrudges ears that would hear me.Jupiter! Lord of All-might, Oh would in days that are bygoneNe'er had Cecropian poops toucht ground at Gnossian foreshore,Nor to the unconquered Bull that tribute direful conveyingHad the false Seaman bound to Cretan island his hawser,Nor had yon evil wight, 'neath shape the softest hard purposeHiding, enjoyed repose within our mansion beguested!Whither can wend I now? What hope lends help to the lost one?Idomenean mounts shall I scale? Ah, parted by whirlpoolsWidest, yon truculent main where yields it power of passage?Aid of my sire can I crave? Whom I willing abandoned,Treading in tracks of a youth bewrayed with blood of a brother!Can I console my soul with the helpful love of a helpmateWho flies me with pliant oars, flies overbounding the sea-depths?Nay, if this Coast I quit, this lone isle lends me no roof-tree,Nor aught issue allows begirt by billows of Ocean:Nowhere is path for flight: none hope shows: all things are silent:All be a desolate waste: all makes display of destruction.Yet never close these eyes in latest languor of dying,Ne'er from my wearied frame go forth slow-ebbing my senses,Ere from the Gods just doom implore I, treason-betrayed,And with my breath supreme firm faith of Celestials invoke I.Therefore, O you who 'venge man's deed with penalties direful,Eumenides! aye wont to bind with viperous hairlocksForeheads,—Oh, deign outspeak fierce wrath from bosom outbreathing,Hither, Oh hither, speed, and lend you all ear to my grievance,Which now sad I (alas!) outpour from innermost vitalsMaugre my will, sans help, blind, fired with furious madness.And, as indeed all spring from veriest core of my bosom,Suffer you not the cause of grief and woe to evanish;But with the Will wherewith could Theseus leave me in loneness,Goddesses! bid that Will lead him, lead his, to destruction."

E'en as she thus poured forth these words from anguish of bosom,And for this cruel deed, distracted, sued she for vengeance,Nodded the Ruler of Gods Celestial, matchless of All-might,When at the gest earth-plain and horrid spaces of oceanTrembled, and every sphere rockt stars and planets resplendent.Meanwhile Theseus himself, obscured in blindness of darknessAs to his mind, dismiss'd from breast oblivious all thingsErewhile enjoined and held hereto in memory constant,Nor for his saddened sire the gladness-signals uphoistingHeralded safe return within sight of the Erechthean harbour.For 'twas told of yore, when from walls of the Virginal DeessAegeus speeding his son, to the care of breezes committed,Thus with a last embrace to the youth spoke words of commandment:

"Son! far nearer my heart (you alone) than life of the longest,Son, I perforce dismiss to doubtful, dangerous chances,Lately restored to me when eld draws nearest his ending,Since such fortune in me, and in you such boiling of valour