Till rage at length inflamed his lofty breast,
For rage invades the wisest and the best.
Cursed by Althæa, to his wrath he yields,
And, in his wife's embrace, forgets the fields.
"She from Marpessa sprung, divinely fair,
And matchless Idas,[1] more than man in war;
The god of day adored the mother's charms:
Against the god the father bent his arms:
The afflicted pair, their sorrows to proclaim,
From Cleopatra changed this daughter's name,
And called Alcyone; a name to shew
The father's grief, the mourning mother's woe.
To her the chief retired from stern debate,
But found no peace from fierce Althæa's hate:
Althæa's hate the unhappy warrior drew,
Whose luckless hand his royal uncle slew;
She beat the ground, and called the powers beneath
On her own son to wreak her brother's death;[2]
Hell heard her curses from the realms profound,
And the red fiends that walked the nightly round;
In vain Ætolia her deliverer waits,
War shakes her walls, and thunders at her gates.
She sent ambassadors, a chosen band,
Priests of the gods, and elders of the land,
Besought the chief to save the sinking state:
Their prayers were urgent, and their proffers great—
Full fifty acres of the richest ground,
Half pasture green, and half with vineyards crowned—
His suppliant father, aged Œneus, came;
His sisters followed: e'en the vengeful dame
Althæa sues; his friends before him fall:
He stands relentless, and rejects them all.
Meanwhile the victors' shouts ascend the skies;
The walls are scaled; the rolling flames arise;
At length his wife, a form divine, appears,
With piercing cries, and supplicating tears;
She paints the horrors of a conquered town,
- ↑ The story to which Homer alludes is this: Idas, by birth a Spartan, travelling to Ortygia in Chalcis, in quest of a wife, there seized and carried off Marpessa. Apollo, meeting Idas, took Marpessa from him; but the hero bending his bow against the god to recover her, Jupiter ordered her to choose between them. She, apprehensive that Apollo would in time forsake her, finally gave her hand to Idas.—Cowper.
- ↑ The sequel of the story is this. Meleager, in the course of the quarrel, slew his uncle, and was cursed by his mother. Enraged by this, he refused to help his countrymen when the Curetes were besieging the town. The elders and his own father entreated him in vain, out he yielded at last to the prayers of his wife, Cleopatra. But he relented too late for his own happiness.
