A poem by Aeschylus (c. 525 – c. 456 Before Christ )
Now long and long from wintry Strymon blew
The weary, hungry, anchor-straining blasts,
The winds that wandering seamen dearly rue,
Nor spared the cables worn and groaning masts;
And, lingering on, in indolent delay,
Slow wasted all the strength of Greece away.
But when the shrill-voiced prophet ‘gan proclaim
That remedy more dismal and more dread
Than the drear weather blackening overhead,
And spoke in Artemis’ most awful name,
The sons of Atreus, ‘mid their armed peers,
Their sceptres dashed to earth, and each broke out in tears,
And thus the elder king began to say:
“Dire doom! to disobey the gods’ commands!
More dire, my child, mine house’s pride, to slay,
Dabbling in virgin blood a father’s hands.
Alas! alas! which way to fly?
As base deserter quit the host,
The pride and strength of our great league all lost?
Should I the storm-appeasing rite deny,
Will not their wrathfullest wrath rage up and swell?
Exact the virgin’s blood?-oh, would ‘t were o’er and well!”
So, ‘neath Necessity’s stern yoke he passed,
And his lost soul, with impious impulse veering,
Surrendered to the accursed unholy blast,
Warped to the dire extreme of human daring.
The frenzy of affliction still
Maddens, dire counselor, man’s soul to ill.
So he endured to be the priest
In that child-slaughtering rite unblest,
The first full offering of that host
In fatal war for a bad woman lost.
The prayers, the mute appeal to her hard sire,
Her youth, her virgin beauty,
Naught heeded they, the chiefs for war on fire.
So to the ministers of that dire duty
(First having prayed) the father gave the sign,
Like some soft kid, to lift her to the shrine.
There lay she prone,
Her graceful garments round her thrown;
But first her beauteous mouth around
Their violent bonds they wound,
With their rude inarticulate might,
Lest her dread curse the fatal house should smite.
But she her saffron robe to earth let fall:
The shaft of pity from her eye
Transpierced that awful priesthood-one and all.
Lovely as in a picture stood she by
As she would speak. Thus at her father’s feasts
The virgin, ‘mid the reveling guests,
Was wont with her chaste voice to supplicate
For her dear father an auspicious fate.
I saw no more! to speak more is not mine;
Not unfulfilled was Calchas’ lore divine.
Eternal justice still will bring
Wisdom out of suffering.
So to the fond desire farewell,
The inevitable future to foretell;
‘Tis but our woe to antedate;
Joint knit with joint, expands the full-formed fate.
Yet at the end of these dark days
May prospering weal return at length;
Thus in his spirit prays
He of the Apian land the sole remaining strength.
A few random poems:
- A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices by Stephen Crane
- In the spring twilight by Sappho
- In A Cuban Garden by Sara Teasdale
- Владимир Набоков – Есть в одиночестве свобода
- Epitaph on Holy Willie by Robert Burns
- Robert Burns: The Banks O’ Doon: Third Version
- Whiteness I Remember by Sylvia Plath
- Anthem For Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen
- My Love’s Guardian Angel by William Barnes
- Владимир Британишский – Не избранностью, не особенностью
- To a son abroad by Sunil Sharma
- Наум Коржавин – Как ты мне изменяла
- The Man In The Bowler Hat
- The Sailor by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Молитва
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- TEMPORARY AND NOW by PEGGY AYLSWORTH
- Swimming Pool by Piera Chen
- Summer by Pornika Ganguly
- Still Life by Piera Chen
- So Long! by Precious Tahula
- Silence by Preeth Nambiar
- Shema by Primo Levi
- Second Poem by Peter Orlovsky
- Reveille by Primo Levi
- Poetic Dilemma by Pawan Kumar
- Snow & Ice by Quincy Troupe
- Untitled by Quincy Troupe
- Poem Reaching For Something by Quincy Troupe
- The Survivor by Primo Levi
- Shema by Primo Levi
- Reveille by Primo Levi
- Snail Poem by Peter Orlovsky
- My Bed is Covered Yellow by Peter Orlovsky
- Second Poem by Peter Orlovsky
- First Poem by Peter Orlovsky
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Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Aeschylus (525 Before Christ to 456 B.C.) was an ancient Greek author of Greek tragedy, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academics’ knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them.