What music in shrieking,
Pleasure in warm live limbs torn slowly?  And dar’st thou behold them! 
Oh, thou hast watched worse deeds!  All sights are alike to thy brightness! 
What if thou waken the birds to their song, dost thou waken no sorrow;
Waken no sick to their pain; no captive to wrench at his fetters? 
Smile on the garden and fold, and on maidens who sing at the milking;
Flash into tapestried chambers, and peep in the eyelids of lovers,
Showing the blissful their bliss—­Dost love, then, the place where thou
smilest? 
Lovest thou cities aflame, fierce blows, and the shrieks of the widow? 
Lovest thou corpse-strewn fields, as thou lightest the path of the vulture? 
Lovest thou these, that thou gazest so gay on my tears, and my mother’s,
Laughing alike at the horror of one, and the bliss of another? 
What dost thou care, in thy sky, for the joys and the sorrows of mortals? 
Colder art thou than the nymphs:  in thy broad bright eye is no seeing. 
Hadst thou a soul—­as much soul as the slaves in the house of my father,
Wouldst thou not save?  Poor thralls! they pitied me, clung to me weeping,
Kissing my hands and my feet—­What, are gods more ruthless than mortals? 
Worse than the souls which they rule?  Let me die:  they war not with ashes!’
   Sudden she ceased, with a shriek:  in the spray, like a hovering foam-bow,
Hung, more fair than the foam-bow, a boy in the bloom of his manhood,
Golden-haired, ivory-limbed, ambrosial; over his shoulder
Hung for a veil of his beauty the gold-fringed folds of the goat-skin,
Bearing the brass of his shield, as the sun flashed clear on its clearness. 
Curved on his thigh lay a falchion, and under the gleam of his helmet
Eyes more blue than the main shone awful; around him Athene
Shed in her love such grace, such state, and terrible daring. 
Hovering over the water he came, upon glittering pinions,
Living, a wonder, outgrown from the tight-laced gold of his sandals;
Bounding from billow to billow, and sweeping the crests like a sea-gull;
Leaping the gulfs of the surge, as he laughed in the joy of his leaping. 
Fair and majestic he sprang to the rock; and the maiden in wonder
Gazed for a while, and then hid in the dark-rolling wave of her tresses,
Fearful, the light of her eyes; while the boy (for her sorrow had awed him)
Blushed at her blushes, and vanished, like mist on the cliffs at the sunrise. 
Fearful at length she looked forth:  he was gone:  she, wild with amazement,
Wailed for her mother aloud:  but the wail of the wind only answered. 
Sudden he flashed into sight, by her side; in his pity and anger
Moist were his eyes; and his breath like a rose-bed, as bolder and bolder,
Hovering under her brows, like a swallow that haunts by the house-eaves,
Delicate-handed, he lifted the veil of her hair; while the maiden
Motionless, frozen with fear, wept loud; till his