Parodos
[Episode]
As for thy Queen of Love, a long farewell to her.
Attendants
Meantime I with sober mind, for I must not copy my young master,
do offer up my prayer to thy image, lady Cypris, in such words as it becomes a slave to use. But thou should’st pardon all, who, in youth’s impetuous heat, speak idle words of thee; make as though thou hearest not,
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for gods must needs be wiser than the sons of men.
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[Choral 1]
A rock there is, where, as they say, the ocean dew distils, and from its beetling brow it pours a copious stream for pitchers to be dipped therein;
Chorus
’twas here I had a friend washing robes of purple in the trickling stream, and she was spreading them out on the face of a warm sunny rock; from her
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I had the tidings, first of all, that my mistress
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she was wasting on the bed of sickness, pent within her house, a thin veil o’ershadowing her head of golden hair.
And this is the third day I hear that she hath closed her lovely lips and denied her chaste body all sustenance, eager to hide her suffering
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and reach death’s cheerless bourn.
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[Choral 2]
Maiden, thou must be possessed, by Pan made frantic or by Hecate, or by the Corybantes dread, and Cybele the mountain mother.
Chorus
Or maybe thou hast sinned against Dictynna, huntress-queen, and art wasting for thy guilt in sacrifice unoffered. For she doth range o’er lakes’ expanse and past the bounds of earth
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upon the ocean’s tossing billows.
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Or doth some rival in thy house beguile thy lord, the captain of Erechtheus’ sons, that hero nobly bom, to secret amours hid from thee?
Or hath some mariner sailing hither from Crete reached this port that sailors love, with evil tidings for our queen, and she with sorrow for her grievous fate
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is to her bed confined?
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[Choral]
Yea, and oft o’er woman’s wayward nature settles a feeling of miserable perplexity, arising from labour-pains or passionate desire.
Chorus
I, too, have felt at times this sharp thrill shoot through me, but I would cry to Artemis, queen of archery, who comes from heaven to aid us in our travail, and thanks to heaven’s grace she ever comes at my call with welcome help.
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