University of Virginia Library

PHILOCTETES
Greatly thou broodest on the sacred wave,
Ray of the amber god. The old sere earth
Opens her eyes and wakens. O thou flame,
Elder than Zeus, thou art to other men
As a god leading them to their desire,
And happy works about the ancient fields;
And gentle things they love are at their side
Brightening to wake them, and not any tear
Is in their halls: but golden as a dream
The fair day flows to even, and the night
Wraps many blessings round her. So the gods
Consent to leave the man a little while,
And overlook their vengeance. Do they so?
Ay, give him bride and children with meek eyes,
And lovely ways and little tender lips,
In his own image. And the man desires
Nothing; the earth is good, he says, and fair,
The flower of time, sweet love. Ay me, but I,
So utterly broken, dare I wander in dream
By their beatitude? The tainted thing,
Scorn of all heroes, leper of the host,
With human loving what have I to do?
Pain and my loathsome curse are truly mine.
God's wisdom—so they call it—gives me these
And keeps their native venom fresh and green.
I tell thee, Zeus, and thy new brood with thee,
Blind rulers, that dishonoured as I am,
I most would scorn, whom all men scorn, a man
To be malignant as ye gods can be.
For time had healed my evil long ago
But ye withheld its healing. Nature loves
And will not leave in pain her children long:
No poison may endure her affluent year,
Filling the brain with the light health of fields.
So did the ancient gods; but thou, O Zeus,
Bringest a bitter mist on the sweet day:
Thou settest night with all her orbs to watch
The pulses of my torment's tidal pain.
Thou hast bound my brow with fire, and nerve by nerve
Hast drawn the long fierce poison like a thread,
For years unwasting, ample to destroy.
And yet thou never gavest me to end
My life beneath thine anger. Is it much
To pray to be as nothing since my breath
So utterly offends thee: gentle and mild,
I covet death the assuager, but thou sayest
“His finger shall not heal thee.” O sick heart,
And very painful limbs, and feeble soul,
Is it worth while for this great lord above
To vex you thus? What pastime can it be
If giants ruin ant-hills? Strong art thou,
Jealous and most resentful; the calm years
Flow, and thy vengeance livelier burns always.
But I a man would pity on my spear
To keep a foeman writhing, tho' he had made
My home a silence, and had given my son
To the grey earth a soulless shadow of sleep.
But towards the gods man's evil has little way,
His good a wing full feeble, both are vain:
Therefore I ask, how sinning have I made
The immortal brow uneasy under its crown
Of domination? Is mere man's offence
To live beyond the offender? For he goes
Under his barrow in a little time,
And all his brain that held the thought is dust;
Doth the third race born from him know his name?
Shall then his wrong perplex the enduring gods?

CHORUS
O thou in ancient days,
The peer of heroes, on whose brow a boy
Glory had breathed with her fair lips, and gave
The archer string; O comrade of the great
Athlete, whose soul from Œta in angry fume
Scaled an unwilling heaven, and sits alway
Beside the purple tables and the cloud,
Allowed an equal godhead, one more throne—
Thou, Philoctetes,
Unwilling colonist
Of rugged Lemnos, mother-land of mine;
She cannot feed the multitudinous
Flocks of the loamy mainland, poor indeed
And yet my country; whom the hoary deep
Sustains with scaly herds, whom pasture none
Delights, but the wave palaces
Of ocean weedy-thresholded—
Fallen art thou, my hero, such a plague
Hath Zeus devised.
And all men left thee when they saw his hand
Was heavy to destroy.
They cast thee from the glory of their war
A tainted thing. They made
No share of battle with thee. So their oars
Ceased at this Lemnos for a little while
And left thee the chance guest
Of a poor nation feeding on the sea.
And yet we reverence thee, O archer king,
Disrooted strangely now from glory's earth,
Because thou grewest once
Comely, and broad, and fair.
We have fed full on days,
And know in life a most unstable hour.
Man standeth for a little and he falls;
Therefore we give his pride
No knee or praising hands,
But if our aid in pain can solace thee
'Tis thine, afflicted king.