118
Translations, &c.
"Adding corrosive anguish and despair.
"So perish'd I with slow-consuming pine! 210
"Me nor the silver-shafted goddess slew
"Nor racking malady; but anxious love
"Of my Ulysses on my vitals prey'd,
"And sunk my age with sorrow to the grave."
She ceas'd: I thrice with filial fondness strove 215
T' embrace the much-lov'd forth, and thrice it fled,
Delusive as a dream. Anew with grief
Heart-chill'd I spake; "Why, Mother, will you fly
"Your son's encircling arms? O here permit
"My duteous love, and let our sorrows flow, 220
"Mingling in one full stream! Or has the queen,
"Whose frown the shades revere, to work me woe,
"A guileful image form'd?" She thus replies:
"Of all mankind, O most to grief inur'd!
"Deem not that aught of guile by phantoms vain
"Is here intended; but the essence pure 226
"Of separate souls is of all living touch
"Impassive: here no gross material frame
"We wear, with flesh incumber'd, nerves, and bone;
"They 're calcin'd on the pile: but when we cease
"To draw the breath of life, the soul on wing 231
"Fleets like a dream, from elemental dross
"Disparted and refin'd. Now to the realms
"Illumin'd with the sun's enliv'ning beam,
"Hence journeying upward, to your consort dear
"Disclose the secrets of our state below." 236
"So perish'd I with slow-consuming pine! 210
"Me nor the silver-shafted goddess slew
"Nor racking malady; but anxious love
"Of my Ulysses on my vitals prey'd,
"And sunk my age with sorrow to the grave."
She ceas'd: I thrice with filial fondness strove 215
T' embrace the much-lov'd forth, and thrice it fled,
Delusive as a dream. Anew with grief
Heart-chill'd I spake; "Why, Mother, will you fly
"Your son's encircling arms? O here permit
"My duteous love, and let our sorrows flow, 220
"Mingling in one full stream! Or has the queen,
"Whose frown the shades revere, to work me woe,
"A guileful image form'd?" She thus replies:
"Of all mankind, O most to grief inur'd!
"Deem not that aught of guile by phantoms vain
"Is here intended; but the essence pure 226
"Of separate souls is of all living touch
"Impassive: here no gross material frame
"We wear, with flesh incumber'd, nerves, and bone;
"They 're calcin'd on the pile: but when we cease
"To draw the breath of life, the soul on wing 231
"Fleets like a dream, from elemental dross
"Disparted and refin'd. Now to the realms
"Illumin'd with the sun's enliv'ning beam,
"Hence journeying upward, to your consort dear
"Disclose the secrets of our state below." 236
