the midst of the people. 
   ’Pure are my hands from blood:  most pure this heart in my bosom. 
Yet one fault I remember this day; one word have I spoken;
Rashly I spoke on the shore, and I dread lest the sea should have heard it. 
Watching my child at her bath, as she plunged in the joy of her girlhood,
Fairer I called her in pride than Atergati, queen of the ocean. 
Judge ye if this be my sin, for I know none other.’  She ended;
Wrapping her head in her mantle she stood, and the people were silent. 
   Answered the dark-browed priests, ’No word, once spoken, returneth,
Even if uttered unwitting.  Shall gods excuse our rashness? 
That which is done, that abides; and the wrath of the sea is against us;
Hers, and the wrath of her brother, the Sun-god, lord of the sheepfolds. 
Fairer than her hast thou boasted thy daughter?  Ah folly! for hateful,
Hateful are they to the gods, whoso, impious, liken a mortal,
Fair though he be, to their glory; and hateful is that which is likened,
Grieving the eyes of their pride, and abominate, doomed to their anger. 
What shall be likened to gods?  The unknown, who deep in the darkness
Ever abide, twyformed, many-handed, terrible, shapeless. 
Woe to the queen; for the land is defiled, and the people accursed. 
Take thou her therefore by night, thou ill-starred Cassiopoeia,
Take her with us in the night, when the moon sinks low to the westward;
Bind her aloft for a victim, a prey for the gorge of the monster,
Far on the sea-girt rock, which is washed by the surges for ever;
So may the goddess accept her, and so may the land make atonement,
Purged by her blood from its sin:  so obey thou the doom of the rulers.’ 
   Bitter in soul they went out, Cepheus and Cassiopoeia,
Bitter in soul; and their hearts whirled round, as the leaves in the eddy. 
Weak was the queen, and rebelled:  but the king, like a shepherd of people,
Willed not the land should waste; so he yielded the life of his daughter. 
   Deep in the wane of the night, as the moon sank low to the westward,
They by the shade of the cliffs, with the horror of darkness around them,
Stole, as ashamed, to a deed which became not the light of the sunshine,
Slowly, the priests, and the queen, and the virgin bound in the galley,
Slowly they rowed to the rocks:  but Cepheus far in the palace
Sate in the midst of the hall, on his throne, like a shepherd of people,
Choking his woe, dry-eyed, while the slaves wailed loudly around him. 
They on the sea-girt rock, which is washed by the surges for ever,
Set her in silence, the guiltless, aloft with her face to the eastward. 
Under a crag of the stone, where a ledge sloped down to the water;
There they set Andromeden, most beautiful, shaped like a goddess,
Lifting her long white arms wide-spread to the walls of the basalt,
Chaining them, ruthless, with brass; and they called