Stasimon 5
[Episode]
Goddess, if tears for such as thee may run
LEADER.
In our low eyes, I weep for thy dead son.
905
MUSE.
I say to thee: Curse Odysseus,
For they made me childless, and forlorn for ever, of
Yea, curse Helen, who left the houses of Hellas.
910
She knew her lover, she feared not the ships and sea.
She called thee, called thee, to die for the sake of Paris,
Belovèd, and a thousand cities
She made empty of good men.
O conquered Thamyris, is this thy baneP. 51, 1. 915. The speech of the Muse seems like the writing of a poet who is, for the moment, tired of mere drama, and wishes to get back into his own element. Such passages are characteristic of Euripides.—The death of Rhesus seems to the Muse like an act of vengeance from the dead Thamyris, the Thracian bard who had blasphemied the Muses and challenged them to a contest of song. They conquered him and left him blind, but still a poet. The story in Homer is more terrible, though more civilised: They in wrath made him a maimed man, they took away his heavenly song and made him forget his harping.
Thamyris, the bard who defied Heaven; Orpheus, the bard, saint, lover, whose severed head still cried for his lost Eurydice; Musaeus, the bard of mystic wisdom and initiations—are the three great legendary figures of this Northern mountain minstrelsy.
915
Returned from death to pierce my heart again?
Thy pride it was, and bitter challenge cast
’Gainst all the Muses, did my flesh abase
To bearing of this Child, what time I passed
Through the deep stream and looked on Strymon’s face,
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And felt his great arms clasp me, when to old
Pangaion and the earth of hoarded gold
We Sisters came with lutes and psalteries,
Provoked to meet in bitter strife of song
That mountain wizard, and made dark the eyes
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Of Thamyris, who wrought sweet music wrong.
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I bore thee, Child; and then, in shame before
My sisterhood, my dear virginity,
I stood again upon thy Father’s shore
And cast thee to the deeps of him; and he
Received and to no mortal nursing gave
His child, but to the Maidens of the Wave.
And well they nursed thee, and a king thou wast
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