A word momentous calmly hast thou spoken. Him nam'st thou ancestor whom all the world Knows as a sometime favorite of the gods? Is it that Tantalus, whom Jove himself Drew to his council and his social board? On whose experienc'd words, with wisdom fraught, As on the language of an oracle, E'en gods delighted hung?
'Tis even he; But the immortal gods with mortal men Should not, on equal terms, hold intercourse; For all too feeble is the human race, Not to grow dizzy on unwonted heights. Ignoble was he not, and no betrayer; To be the Thunderer's slave, he was too great; To be his friend and comrade,--but a man. His crime was human, and their doom severe; For poets sing, that treachery and pride Did from Jove's table hurl him headlong down To grovel in the depths of Tartarus. Alas, and his whole race must bear their hate.
Bear they their own guilt, or their ancestor's?
The Titan's mighty breast and nervous frame Was his descendants' certain heritage; But round their brow Jove forg'd a band of brass. Wisdom and patience, prudence and restraint, He from their gloomy, fearful eye conceal'd; In them each passion grew to savage rage, And headlong rush'd with violence uncheck'd. Already Pelops, Tantalus' loved son, Mighty of will, obtained his beauteous bride, Hippodamia, child of Oenomaus, Through treachery and murder; she ere long, To glad her consort's heart, bare him two sons, Thyest and Atreus. They with envy marked The ever-growing love their father bare To his first-born, sprung from another union. Hate leagued the pair, and secretly they wrought, In fratricide, the first dread crime. The sire Hippodamia held as murderess, With savage rage he claim'd from her his son, And she in terror did destroy herself--
Thou'rt silent? Pause not in thy narrative; Repent not of thy confidence--say on!
How blest is he who his progenitors With pride remembers, to the listener tells The story of their greatness, of their deeds, And, silently rejoicing, sees himself The latest link of this illustrious chain! For seldom does the selfsame stock produce The monster and the demigod: a line Of good or evil ushers in, at last, The glory or the terror of the world.-- After the death of Pelops, his two sons Rul'd o'er the city with divided sway. But such an union could not long endure. His brother's honor first Thyestes wounds. In vengeance Atreus drove him from the realm. Thyestes, planning horrors, long before Had stealthily procur'd his brother's son, Whom he in secret nurtur'd as his own. Revenge and fury in his breast he pour'd, Then to the royal city sent him forth, That in his uncle he might slay his sire. The meditated murder was disclos'd, And by the king most cruelly aveng'd, Who slaughter'd as he thought, his brother's son. Too late he learn'd whose dying tortures met His drunken gaze; and seeking to assuage The insatiate vengeance that possess'd his soul, He plann'd a deed unheard of. He assum'd A friendly tone, seem'd reconcil'd, appeas'd, And lur'd his brother, with his children twain, Back to his kingdom; these he seiz'd and slew; Then plac'd the loathsome and abhorrent food At his first meal before the unconscious sire. And when Thyestes had his hunger still'd With his own flesh, a sadness seiz'd his soul; He for his children ask'd,--their steps, their voice Fancied he heard already at the door; And Atreus, grinning with malicious joy, Threw in the members of the slaughter'd boys.-- Shudd'ring, O king, thou dost avert thy face: So did the sun his radiant visage hide, And swerve his chariot from the eternal path. These, monarch, are thy priestess' ancestors, And many a dreadful fate of mortal doom, And many a deed of the bewilder'd brain, Dark night doth cover with her sable wing, Or shroud in gloomy twilight.