The Bear Guard, born the son of Zeus, who took
Callisto when from heaven he did look;
The king beheld her beauty and did sate
Himself and made her for a time his mate;
His son was murdered to revenge the deed:
His grandsire thought some mischief good to breed.
Callisto was his daughter, and he sought
Revenge, conceiving in his heart a thought,
Which he brought forth and took his grandson’s life,
And trimmed him for the table with his knife.
To see if Zeus knew all, he called him there,
And set a lavish table in his lair:
But Zeus was wroth, for when he saw the meat,
He knew Lycaon guilty of deceit,
And in his rage he overturned the board,
And promptly to his former form restored
His son and placed him in a goat herd’s care,
And when he grew he went to hunt a bear,
Not knowing that his mother had exchanged
Her human form, and to the bear been changed.
He overstepped the temple’s boundary,
A crime which carried a death penalty:
But Zeus, he snatched them up into the sky
In order that they’d live and never die;
He placed his son in heaven with the Bear
To guard and make it his eternal care.
So, Arctophylax, Bear-Guard he was called,
When in the heavens he had been installed.
But lightning struck Lycaon’s house when Zeus
Hurled down his bolt, revenging the abuse.
He turned Lycaon to a wolf to feast
On flesh to be thenceforth a savage beast.
Tag: Arcas
The Great Bear
Callisto, daughter of Lycaon, born
To revel in the hunt, to Artemis sworn:
But Zeus looked down from heaven and beheld,
And saw your beauty, and his desire swelled,
And in his cunning, he took a disguise,
Appearing as the goddess in your eyes.
By force he took you, but you did not blame,
Till the day when you couldn’t hide your shame;
For when your belly was heavy with child,
Artemis beheld, and with fury wild,
Demanded why you turned from devotion,
But you replied, heavy with emotion,
That the goddess was guilty of the deed;
From her you had received the shameful seed.
The goddess, then, was filled with awful rage,
Which none could turn, to cause her to assuage
Her wrath; so she turned you into a bear,
And suffered not a mortal soul to dare
To speak a lie, and the divine defame,
Lest evil souls presume to do the same.
And, after this you bore Arcas, a son,
And he grew up, and after you did run;
And both of you were taken in a wood
By the Aetolians, who thought it good
To offer you up as a gift to Zeus;
Their intention you quickly did deduce.
The temple of Lycaean Zeus was near;
To it you fled for refuge in your fear,
And Arcas came behind you in your flight:
Zeus, who sat above, looked down from his height,
And knew himself of this to be the cause;
Then, since he’s just and right in all his laws,
He snatched you up and placed you in the sky,
And then he took your son and set him by,
To follow you among the stars each night,
And never from the heavens to alight.
For, Tethys, wife of Ocean, will not let
You enter in, and so you never set;
For Hera, in her wrath, was filled with hate,
So Tethys would not let you cross her gate;
For, she was Hera’s nurse, and loves her so:
She will not suffer you to sink below.
You wander nightly in your northern home,
Above, in heaven’s starry nighttime dome.
Songs of the Gods 