*How him, a prisoner bound on whirling wheel,
The son of Kronos smote, omnipotent;[1]680
But never have I seen or heard of one
Of mortal men that met
A gloomier fate than his,
Who having done no wrong to life or goods,
But just among the just,
Was brought thus low, in doom dishonourable:
And wonder holds my soul,
How he, still hearing in his loneliness
The dashing of the breakers on the shore,
Endurèd still to live
A life all lamentable;690
Antistroph. I.
Where he alone was neighbour to himself,
Powerless to move a limb,
And having on this isle
No habitant, companion in his grief,
With whom to wail his sharp and bleeding pain,
In echoing burst of lamentation loud,
With none to stanch or soothe
(When such ill came on him)
The scalding blood that oozed from cankering sore
Of that envenomed foot,
With healing herbs, or fetch them from the earth
That giveth food to all;700
But ever like a child without its nurse,
Now here, now there, he dragged his writhing limbs,
Wending his way for ease,
When the pain respite gave:
- ↑ Ixion's guilt, in the old Greek legends, was, first, that of treacherous murder, and then, when Zeus had compassion upon the madness and misery that followed, the crime here referred to, for which Zeus bound him for ever to a fiery, never-resting wheel in Tartaros.
