But abideth with knowledge, what thing was wrought by [1]Althea's despair;
For she marr'd the life-grace of her son, with ill counsel rekindled the flame
That was quenched as it glowed on the brand, what time from his mother he came,
With the cry of a new-born child; and the brand from the burning she won,
For the Fates had foretold it coeval, in life and in death, with her son.
Yea, and man's hate tells of another, even Scylla[2] of murderous guile,
Who slew for an enemy's sake her father, won o'er by the wile
And the gifts of Cretan Minos, the gauds of the high-wrought gold;
For she clipped from her father's head the lock that should never wax old,
As he breathed in the silence of sleep, and knew not her craft and her crime—
But Hermes, the guard of the dead, doth grasp her, in fulness of time.
- ↑ This legend, (accessible now, to all lovers of poetry, in Mr. Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon,) is briefly as follows:—Althea, at the birth of her son Meleager, had a vision of the Fates, who told her that her son should live till the brand then on the hearth was consumed. Therefore she extinguished the brand and guarded it, till being wroth with Meleager for having slain her brothers, Toxeus and Plexippus, she cast the brand into the flame, and as it wasted so did Meleager perish and pass away.
- ↑ Scylla, daughter of Nisus, king of Megara, betrayed her father and his kingdom to Minos, king of Crete: for she loved Minos, and being persuaded by him, did cut off from her father's head, as he lay asleep, a lock of purple hair; which lock so long as he kept unshorn, it was fated that neither he nor his kingdom should fall.
