PHI.  O cavern of the hollow rock, I 1
Frosty and stifling in the seasons’ change! 
How I seem fated never more to range
From thy sad covert, that hath felt the shock
Of pain on pain, steeped with my wretchedness. 
Now thou wilt be my comforter in death! 
Grief haunted harbour, choked with my distress! 
Tell me, what hope is mine of daily food,
Who will be careful for my good? 
I fail.  Ye cowering creatures of the sky,
          Oh, as ye fly,
Snatch me, borne upward on the blast’s sharp breath!

CH. 1.  Thou child of misery! 
        No mightier power hath this decreed,
        But thine own will and deed
        Hath bound thee thus in grief,
Since, when kind Heaven had sent relief
And shown the path of wisdom firm and sure,
Thou still hast chosen this evil to endure.

PHI.  O hapless life, sore bruised with pain!  I 2
No more with living mortal may I dwell,
But ever pining in this desert cell
With lonely grief, all famished must remain
And perish; for what food is mine to share,
When this strong arm no longer wields my bow,
Whose fleet shafts flew to smite the birds of air
I was o’erthrown by words, words dark and blind,
Low-creeping from a traitorous mind! 
O might I see him, whose unrighteous thought
          This ruin wrought,
Plagued for no less a period with like woe!

CH. 2.  Not by our craft thou art caught,
But Destiny divine hath wrought
        The net that holds thee bound. 
        Aim not at us the sound
Of thy dread curse with dire disaster fraught. 
On others let that light!  ’Tis our true care
Thou should’st not scorn our love in thy despair.

PHI.  Now, seated by the shore II 1
    Of heaving ocean hoar,
    He mocks me, waving high
    The sole support of my precarious being,
    The bow which none e’er held but I.
O treasure of my heart, torn from this hand,
That loved thy touch,—­if thou canst understand,
How sad must be thy look in seeing
Thy master destined now no more,
Like Heracles of yore,
To wield thee with an archer’s might! 
But in the grasp of an all-scheming wight,
O bitter change! thou art plied;
And swaying ever by his side,
Shalt view his life of dark malignity,
Teeming with guileful shames, like those he wrought on me.

CH. 3.  Nobly to speak for the right
    Is manly and strong;
    But not with an envious blight
    To envenom the tongue;
    He to serve all his friends of the fleet,
    One obeying a many-voiced word,
    Through the minist’ring craft of our lord
    Hath but done what was meet.