This distinctly suggests a renunciation, an envy of one's own youth, that time of freedom which one would like to retain through a deep-rooted dislike to all duty and endeavor which is denied an immediate pleasure reward. Painstaking work for a long time and for a remote object is not in the nature of child or primitive man. It is difficult to say if this can really be called laziness, but it seems to have not a little in common with it, in so far as the psychic life on a primitive stage, be it of an infantile or archaic type, possesses an extreme inertia and irresponsibility in production and non-production.
The last stanza portends evil, a gazing towards the other land, the distant coast of sunrise or sunset; love no longer holds the poet, the bonds with the world are torn and he calls loudly for assistance to the mother:
Achilles.
"Lordly son of the Gods! Because you lost your loved one,
You went to the rocky coast and cried aloud to the flood,
Till the depths of the holy abyss heard and echoed your grief,
From the far reaches of your heart. Down, deep down, far from the clamor of ships,
Deep under the waves, in a peaceful cave,
Dwelt the beautiful Thetis, she who protected you, the Goddess of the Sea,
Mother of the youth was she; the powerful Goddess,
She who once had lovingly nursed him,
On the rocky shore of his island; she who had made him a hero
With the might of her strengthening bath and the powerful song of the waves.
And the mother, mourning, hearkened to the cry of her child,
And rose, like a cloud, from the bed of the sea,
Soothing with tender embraces the pains of her darling;
And he listened, while she, caressing, promised to soften his grief.
