He (Orpheus), consoling his sorrowful love with his hollow lyre,
Would sing of you, sweet wife, you with him on the deserted shore,
You as the day was dawning, you at its dying.
He even went into the jaws of Taenarus, the high doors of Dis [=Pluto],
And the grove which was gloomy with dark terror,
And came to the sould of the dead, and the terrifying king,
And the hearts not knowing how to be softened by human prayers.
But the slender shades, stirred by the song, and the ghosts of those lacking light
Were moving from the deepest resting-places of Erebus,
As many as the thousands of birds which hide themselves in the leaves,
When the evening or the winter rain drives them from the mountains,
Mothers and husbands, and the bodies of great-hearted heroes
Who are finished with life, boys and unwed girls,
And youths put upon the pyres before their parents faces,
Whom the black slime and the ugly reeds
And the hateful marsh enclose around with its sluggish course
And the nine tributaries of the Styx [lit. the Styx nine times interflowing] confine.
Indeed, the very abodes were spellbound, as were the innermost regions of Letum
And the Furies with sea-green snakes woven in their hair,
And Cerberus opening wide his three mouths, holds still,
And the revolving wheel of Ixion has stopped in the wind.
And now Eurydice retracing her steps had escaped from all the hazards
And having been given back was coming to the airs above
Following just behind (for Perspehone had given this condition),
When a sudden madness seized the heedless lover -
Indeed it was forgivable, if the souls of the dead knew how to forgive:
He stopped, and - alas! - without thinking, on the very verge of daylight,
Defeated in his resolve, at his own Eurydice he looked back. Then all
The effort was wasted, the conditions of the cruel king were broken,
And three times the thunderclap was heard in the lakes of Avernus.
She said, "What has ruined me, wretch that I am, and you, Orpheus,
What is this madness that is so great? Look, the cruel fates call me back again,
And sleep is closing my streaming eyes.
And now farewell: surrounded by the enveloping [lit. huge] night I am borne away
While holding out my powerless hands to you, though alas I am not yours."
So she spoke, and suddenly she fled away from sight,
Just like smoke mixed with slight breezes,
And never more did she see him as he grasped the shadows
And wished to say so much; nor did the ferryman of Orcus
Allow him to cross again the marsh that lay in his way.
What should he do? Where could he take himself to, with his wife twice snatched away?
With what weeping could he move the dead spirits, which gods could he stir with his voice?
In fact she was now ice-cold, sailing in the Stygian boat.
They say that he wept for seven whole months on end
Under a towering rock near the shore of deserted Strymon
And related these things beneath the chilly caverns
Whilst taming tigers and enthralling oaks with his song;
Just as the nightingale, mourning under the poplar's shade
Laments her stolen chicks, which the rugged ploughman
Stole from the nest when he saw them unfeathered;
Yet she weeps through the night, and renews her woeful song while sitting on a branch,
And she fills places far and wide with her doleful laments.
No love of woman nor marriages could move the spirit:
Alone, Orpheus would roam over the ice-fields of the Hyperborei [='above the North Wind'],
Snowy Tanais and the fields never freed from the frosts of the Riphaei,
Pining for stolen Eurydice and the futile gifts of Pluto.
The matrons of the Cicones, spurned by this devotion,
Amidst the sacred revels of the gods and of nocturnal Bacchus
Scattered the young man ripped asunder over the broad fields.
Then also when the ancestral [lit. of Oeagrius] river Hebrus would flow,
Carrying his head torn from the marble-white neck in the midst of its waters,
The voice itself and the cold tongue, as the life-force was escaping,
Would call Eurydice, O poor Eurydice!
The banks would re-echo Eurydice throughout the river.
Would sing of you, sweet wife, you with him on the deserted shore,
You as the day was dawning, you at its dying.
He even went into the jaws of Taenarus, the high doors of Dis [=Pluto],
And the grove which was gloomy with dark terror,
And came to the sould of the dead, and the terrifying king,
And the hearts not knowing how to be softened by human prayers.
But the slender shades, stirred by the song, and the ghosts of those lacking light
Were moving from the deepest resting-places of Erebus,
As many as the thousands of birds which hide themselves in the leaves,
When the evening or the winter rain drives them from the mountains,
Mothers and husbands, and the bodies of great-hearted heroes
Who are finished with life, boys and unwed girls,
And youths put upon the pyres before their parents faces,
Whom the black slime and the ugly reeds
And the hateful marsh enclose around with its sluggish course
And the nine tributaries of the Styx [lit. the Styx nine times interflowing] confine.
Indeed, the very abodes were spellbound, as were the innermost regions of Letum
And the Furies with sea-green snakes woven in their hair,
And Cerberus opening wide his three mouths, holds still,
And the revolving wheel of Ixion has stopped in the wind.
And now Eurydice retracing her steps had escaped from all the hazards
And having been given back was coming to the airs above
Following just behind (for Perspehone had given this condition),
When a sudden madness seized the heedless lover -
Indeed it was forgivable, if the souls of the dead knew how to forgive:
He stopped, and - alas! - without thinking, on the very verge of daylight,
Defeated in his resolve, at his own Eurydice he looked back. Then all
The effort was wasted, the conditions of the cruel king were broken,
And three times the thunderclap was heard in the lakes of Avernus.
She said, "What has ruined me, wretch that I am, and you, Orpheus,
What is this madness that is so great? Look, the cruel fates call me back again,
And sleep is closing my streaming eyes.
And now farewell: surrounded by the enveloping [lit. huge] night I am borne away
While holding out my powerless hands to you, though alas I am not yours."
So she spoke, and suddenly she fled away from sight,
Just like smoke mixed with slight breezes,
And never more did she see him as he grasped the shadows
And wished to say so much; nor did the ferryman of Orcus
Allow him to cross again the marsh that lay in his way.
What should he do? Where could he take himself to, with his wife twice snatched away?
With what weeping could he move the dead spirits, which gods could he stir with his voice?
In fact she was now ice-cold, sailing in the Stygian boat.
They say that he wept for seven whole months on end
Under a towering rock near the shore of deserted Strymon
And related these things beneath the chilly caverns
Whilst taming tigers and enthralling oaks with his song;
Just as the nightingale, mourning under the poplar's shade
Laments her stolen chicks, which the rugged ploughman
Stole from the nest when he saw them unfeathered;
Yet she weeps through the night, and renews her woeful song while sitting on a branch,
And she fills places far and wide with her doleful laments.
No love of woman nor marriages could move the spirit:
Alone, Orpheus would roam over the ice-fields of the Hyperborei [='above the North Wind'],
Snowy Tanais and the fields never freed from the frosts of the Riphaei,
Pining for stolen Eurydice and the futile gifts of Pluto.
The matrons of the Cicones, spurned by this devotion,
Amidst the sacred revels of the gods and of nocturnal Bacchus
Scattered the young man ripped asunder over the broad fields.
Then also when the ancestral [lit. of Oeagrius] river Hebrus would flow,
Carrying his head torn from the marble-white neck in the midst of its waters,
The voice itself and the cold tongue, as the life-force was escaping,
Would call Eurydice, O poor Eurydice!
The banks would re-echo Eurydice throughout the river.