And whirl'd thee on his golden steeds above
To the high palace of immortal Jove;
Where Ganymede in days of yore70
The same illustrious office bore. 71
But when the long inquiring train
Had sought their absent charge in vain
To his fond mother to restore,
The slanderous whisper circled round75
That in the fervid wave profound,
Hewn by the sword, his limbs were cast,
And to the lords of heaven supplied a sweet repast!
But far the impious thought from me
To tax the bless'd with gluttony;80
For well I know that pains await
The lips that slanderous tales relate.
If the great gods who on Olympus dwell
High favour e'er on man bestow'd
Above the undistinguish'd crowd,85
To Tantalus the lot of honour fell.
But ah! too feeble to digest [1]
The raptures of the heavenly feast,
His haughty soul incensed to ire
The might of his immortal sire;90
Who o'er his head a massy rock
Suspended,[2] that with direful shock
- ↑ Hesiod (Theog. 638, et seq.) declares that the same effects of pride and insolence were wrught on the minds of the Titans after they had been allowed to partake of the divine aliments:—
"Their spirits nectar and ambrosia raise."
Cooke's Version.Might not this fable, which is also related, almost in the words of Pindar, by the scholiast on the Odyssey, (iv. 58.,) owe its origin to some obscure tradition of the gathering of manna by the Israelites in the wilderness, when man did eat angels' food?
- ↑ Lucretius, in his magnificent description of infernal pun-
Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, melted away into her shower of snowy tears. See the exquisite description of Sophocles—(Antig. 824—833. ;) also that of Ovid—(Met. vi. 301—312.)
