Tale of Archais

THE TALE OF ARCHAIS 27 The fading moon drifts sorrowful above. Then Charicles must ask his weeping love To lead him to the fountain of her tears. But she, possessed by vague and violent fears, Spake not a little while, and then began : “ O thou, a child of Heaven, and a man, Even so my lover, shall my woeful song So move thy spirit for my bitter wrong (God-nurtured though thou be) against the rods Laid on me by my mother, whom the gods, Righteous in anger, doomed, for fiery sin Kindled by hell-flames, cherishéd within Her lustful heart, for sin most damnable, To suffer torment in remotest hell, Where the grim fiend grinds down with fiery stones The unrepentant marrow of men’s bones, Or chills their blood with poisonous vials of death, Or dooms them to the tooth and venomous breath Of foul black worms ; and on the earth to dwell For a long space, and there (most terrible !) To change her shape at times, and on her take The fierce presentment of a loathly snake