The goddess, wise, was born unmixed
From Zeus, and was his favorite;
All wisdom, craft, and justice fixed
By her strong hands and unmatched wit.
Her gifts to man are beyond count:
How could he thrive without her aid?
Descends she from the lofty mount,
All armed as war’s triumphant maid.
She taught the cultivation of
The olive tree, and crafts were hers;
Unmoved, unswayed by sickly love,
Her justice right rewards renders.
Her favour for Odysseus,
Most cunning of all men, and wise,
Ceased not, and therefore shows to us,
To whom we may lift up our eyes,
As model for a worthy life;
He slew the suitors at their feast,
Turned table joys to bitter strife,
Till to a man they were deceased.
She judged Orestes innocent,
To free him from the Furies’ wrath;
So, on his way the king’s son went,
To tread a lighter, joyful, path.
She loves the hero, he who fights,
Who struggles on for what is right,
Whose raging sword the unjust bites,
Reducing them to shades by might.
Tag: Greek mythology
Hermes
How Hermes the herald hearkens with haste;
How before Zeus he is humble and chaste,
He is his messenger, at his command,
To serve and to sit at heaven’s king’s hand.
But who are his foes, take heed and beware!
From rapine, from theft, of such he won’t spare.
For even Apollo, he tricked and deceived;
Apollo was wroth, and his soul was grieved:
His oxen were missing, and some were dead,
And Hermes the thief had speedily fled;
He found him and railed, threatening to destroy
The newborn Hermes, who was Maia’s boy:
But Hermes with words, both skillful and smooth,
And with a gift, the same Phoebus did soothe;
The lute he had fashioned, he gave to the sun,
After his tale, like a spider, he’d spun.
He fathered a son named Autolycus;
From him was descended Odysseus:
From Hermes he got his cunning and wit,
And so many bold tricks did he commit;
He never spoke truth to his enemies,
And only himself did he seek to please.
Also, like Hermes, he was changeable
(In this he was truly commendable);
When Ajax had slain the flocks and the herds,
Bewailing his state with lamentable words,
Odysseus marked him as his enemy:
But after Ajax had set himself free
From all of life’s toils by a sword in his breast,
Then Odysseus put hatred to rest;
Persuaded he Agamemnon to let
The body be buried – without regret,
He turned and was merciful, that some day
When he was dead, he’d be interred the same way.
And this polarity, Hermes possesses;
For change, to the god, never distresses;
He travels with ease, with fleetness of foot,
From heaven’s height to the underworld’s root;
For Hermes conducts the dead to the same
(All mortals go thence, no matter their fame);
He came from the deep; he was born in a cave:
No wonder that he conducts man to the grave.
One finds him in commerce, the province of thieves,
Which often, unchecked, devours and bereaves.
Who can understand all of Hermes’ ways?
The same shall, in wisdom, prolong his days.
Hades
The king of Tartarus, lord of the dead,
Who over the shades and Typhon is head;
And also, the Titans holds he in chains,
Delighting at Kronos, gripped in his pains,
Is Hades, brother to Zeus; for he got
The realm of the dead to rule for his lot.
Content he was not, but wanted a wife,
To bring him beauty and joy in his life;
He took Persephone by force below,
And then, a gift on his bride did bestow,
The seeds of a pomegranate, and her fate
Was sealed the moment that she took and ate:
As fruit, by its seed, winters below ground,
Then shoots forth in spring, when flowers abound,
He holds her safe in the season of frost,
But during summer, to him she is lost.
As man in labour needs comfort of friends,
Like this on Cerberus, Hades depends;
The mirrors of gods are men in their deeds;
The deities teach what every man needs.
Cerberus watches, as guard at the gates,
On prison-breakers, his hunger he sates.
Three-headed, black, a serpent for a tail,
Whose courage when faced with this wouldn’t fail?
But Heracles faced him, courage perfected,
And rose from Tartarus, man resurrected.
So Hades keeps the monsters and the shades
Imprisoned; Typhon cannot make his raids
On Earth: this duty that Hades performs
Keeps everyone safe from trouble and storms.
For what if the dead rose up and rebelled,
And all the living from Earth were expelled?
Should Typhon rise up, and spew forth his fire?
Should men in the grip of Python expire?
Should Kronos devour whatever he lists,
Till nothing remains, till nothing exists?
But these are restrained, and Earth is at peace:
The monsters and Titans held fast in decease.
Such are the gifts of the Underworld’s king,
And the gifts of his wife that come in spring.
On the Value of Struggle
The laws of men are given by the wise,
Or sometimes by magicians steeped in lies;
The former found just states, where good and truth
Abound, and raise in health and strength their youth:
The latter make of all a marketplace,
Devoid of charm, of beauty, wit, or grace;
Unchecked, desires, are suffered to expand
Until they glut the city, state, and land;
Then weakness grows, until, like fatted sows,
Ten sit and eat for every one that plows.
But nature, when the laws of men have failed,
When beauty, truth, and good like shades have paled,
This nature has its own laws it upholds;
The strong it raises, but the weak it scolds:
But these, unheeding, it will later crush;
The former, though, is verdant, full and lush:
So, those who check themselves before the law,
A better lot from nature do they draw;
When crushed beneath blind Fortune’s heavy trials,
They grow in strength, in health, in wit and wiles.
In this did Hera, on Heracles impose
So many troubles, many frightful blows;
She sent the serpents, soon as he was born:
But he strangled them, in his infant scorn;
She sent him Madness, so he did destroy
His wife and children, all his mortal joy;
She caused him, then, to serve the coward king
(a coward lord is such a bitter thing).
Twelve labours gave Eurystheus to kill:
But all of them did Heracles fulfill.
Then, when he died, he went to heaven where
He wedded Hebe, youthful goddess, fair,
Who was the daughter of Hera and Zeus:
Perfected, had he then, with Hera a truce;
Though all his life, his troubles vexed him sore,
Yet each one raised and strengthened him the more.
In his name we see this very mystery,
That Hera found in him felicity:
His name meant pride of Hera, for he rose
Above all troubles, trials, and all blows
Until he was the greatest man alive:
For this his name on earth does still survive.
So, they that struggle against all the odds,
They too find favour from the good, the gods;
Though Fate should hammer them with fearsome blows,
Against the tides of troubles and of woes
They beat their oars or swim until the waves,
Submerge them, sending them unto their graves.
But every height they scale, every battle won,
Every undertaken expedition,
Brings them closer to Olympus’ storied height,
Home of all the gods of beauty, truth, and light.
The Sons of Boreas and the Harpies
The prophet Phineas heard the drumming
Of Argonauts treading in their coming;
Their ship had landed on the isle that he
Was settled on; he waited near the sea.
They marched to him; he was much delighted;
How long had he been tortured, cursed, and blighted;
A Fury blinded him, and with old age
Great Zeus had cursed him to appease his rage;
For though Apollo gave him sight to see
All hidden things, to know all prophecy,
Yet Phineus had not rendered to Zeus
Honor, and so Zeus heaped on him abuse.
But what was worse than this pursued him too;
When he would eat, down from on high there flew
The Harpies, hounds! They snatched from him his food,
And left a stench foul, horrid, noisome, crude.
From nests of spite, they swooped to raid each day;
Such was their sport, their joy, their awful play.
What crumbs they left did he devour, but still
They sapped his strength, his health, his heart, his will.
The Argonauts, they found this wretched soul,
And asked what thing had taken such a toll:
He knew the men, and called each one by name;
Already Jason was a man of fame;
And he besought them, “Save me from the beasts
Who make of all my food their vulgar feasts;
Zeus’ harpies hound me, leaving me no peace.
I suffer, so I beg you help me please!”
He told them of their many robberies,
And they could smell the stench of their disease;
He told them also that a prophecy
Said Boreas’ sons would from them make him free.
The hearts of both the Boreads arose,
And hearing, both were keen to seek the foes,
But feared the gods, not trusting prophecy;
They wished instead an oath for surety.
So, first by Leto’s son did Phineus swear;
Then those who dwell in the chthonic lair
Invoked he, promising their anger would
Fall not on Boreas’ sons for what was good.
This done, the sons of Boreas desired
To chase the Harpies, and with hope were fired;
So, they prepared the Harpies’ final meal,
Then set it out for feathered hounds to steal.
They stood by Phineus ready to fly
The moment that a Harpy dared swoop by.
They waited not: the Harpies came with speed,
Devouring all, in their insatiate greed.
The feast was gone; the Harpies took to flight,
And left a stench, the savour of their blight.
But Zeus sped Zetes, and Calaïs too;
They rose and swiftly in pursuit they flew.
The Harpies sailed far faster than the gales,
And yet the Boreads nearly grasped their tails;
They harried them until they reached the place
Of Ever-Floating Isles, and then the grace
Of Iris’ voice is heard, and it resounds
To stop the chase and save Zeus’ feathered hounds:
She says that Justice won’t abide the sword
To slay the playthings of Olympus’ lord.
“But yet the Harpies shall not anymore
Rob poor, blind Phineus, nor vex him sore:
The Harpies shall go back into their pen,
And eat no more the fruits of labouring men.”
And Iris swore an oath upon the Styx,
That river by which Earth and Tartarus mix.
This done the Boreads gave up the chase,
And each towards Thynia turned his face;
The Turning Isles then became the name
Of that place where the Boreads did the same;
And to Olympus Iris flew again
To join the king of Heaven’s faithful train;
The Harpies, leashed, could no more vex and rage,
But back in Crete they went into their cage.
Their stench was washed from off Phineus hide;
With overflowing joy, he laughed and cried.
The Argonauts prepared a feast and dined;
Phineus then their future path divined.
The morning after, the people came again,
And as in times of old, Phineus made plain
Their prophecies, receiving gifts of food,
To everyone who came, both high and rude.
But still his blindness could not be removed;
In that, by Zeus, he was as yet reproved.
The Cerynitian Hind or the Third Labour of Heracles
A crash in brambles, and the hind is caught;
Now worn down, Heracles has what he sought.
Through forests, valleys, over mountain tops,
Through fields that yielded a bounty of crops,
The warrior chased her: but she was swift,
And northwards she tended always to drift;
For though in the south the chase had begun,
To Hyperborea did the doe run;
And Heracles laboured through cold and snow,
Where winds that are bitter bluster and blow.
The hind would have left Heracles behind,
But great strength within himself did he find:
His father was Zeus, from him he received
Such might as the mind has barely conceived;
He lost the deer not, but southward again
He followed to where, reared up o’er the plain
The Artemision, the mount of old,
Where the goddess herself her hunts did hold.
The hind yet pressed on, with horns like the stags;
She leaped and she bounded over the crags;
Then onward she pressed, and came through the wood,
Which by the river known as Ladon stood:
A bush snagged her horns; she shook with her might,
To free herself, that she could resume flight;
She freed herself, but the warrior’s ambit
Is such that a shot is surely to hit
(At least for a son born to the god Zeus:
For others to try would be of no use).
Now Heracles sees; he notches his bow,
Then pulls the string back, and last, marks the doe.
He looses his shaft; the arrow flies straight,
The reindeer is struck by the hand of Fate:
But he was careful, that only the haunch
Was struck by the missile that he did launch;
He knew that the deer was sacred to she
Who rules the woodlands, the goddess, the free;
Had he killed the hind, the goddess, engaged,
Might have killed him, when in anger she raged.
But such as it was, the doe was alive,
And Heracles, too, would also survive.
He carried the hind, and went on his way;
Across his shoulders, his catch did he lay;
With speed he we went, with this labour employed,
But yet Artemis he couldn’t avoid:
Apollo was with her, crossing the land;
Before Heracles revealed did she stand.
Accused she the hero of trying to kill,
And thus, of defying her sacred will,
The hallowed hind: but Heracles pleaded,
And said the deed was desperately needed;
Eurystheus required him: he was bound
To bring him the hind, when it had been found.
When Artemis heard, then she let him go,
And onward he went, still bearing the doe.
The warrior returned to Mycenae,
And the labour the king could not deny;
The deer that he had was surely the one,
By which the damage before had been done.
Eurystheus hoped the hero would fail;
And, deep in his soul, he gave a great wail;
The strength of the lion could not succeed,
Neither the hydra could finish the deed:
The might of Heracles overcame these,
And, now, the hind, he had captured with ease.
Eurystheus feared, and sent him away,
To call for a labour another day.
Poseidon
The stallion, shaker of the earth,
Who brought the Cyclops to the birth,
Whose rage was famed in history,
Who drowned great Ajax in the sea;
Poseidon, brother of the king,
Whose trident strike brings forth a spring;
If he but shake his mighty head,
He gluts the seas with sailors dead;
Their ships are dashed; they’re cast ashore,
Or sink below: they’re seen no more.
He rends the earth to swallow those,
Whose hubris made them to suppose
That they, but men, could so defy
The god whose brother rules the sky;
If he should find with men a fault,
He fills their streams and springs with salt.
For those he loves, he calms the seas,
And sends a gentle, guiding breeze;
Their wells give water clean and pure,
By this their lives are made secure.
His horses’ hooves like thunder sound,
In rhythmic echoes they resound.
The king of earth Poseidon is,
The lands, the oceans, all are his.
Boötes
Boötes, farmer, driver of the ox,
Who tilled the Earth instead of keeping flocks;
He was Demeter’s child, a demigod,
But mortals raised him to work and till the sod,
To turn a field of wild grass into such
As would when planted with wheat bring forth much.
But not Boötes only Demeter had,
For she bore twins and birthed another lad;
These two, they worked a farm, and then they went
To hunt and fish each day till they were spent.
Now, Plutus was Boötes’ brother’s name,
He had great wealth, but would not share the same;
And so Boötes tilled the land to feed
Himself; in season planted he the seed;
And though each year, it sprang forth and grew,
The work was heavy and exhausting too:
But then Boötes’ ingenuity,
Devised a way that with facility
The work could be performed; with a device
But little labour from him would then suffice:
This thing was called the plow, and bread was earned
When oxen were yoked, and the land was turned.
Demeter learned of this deed of her son,
Of the fame among men that he had won;
And so she stretched her hand down from on high,
And plucked her son and placed him in the sky.
A constellation, he now hunts the Bear,
Pursuing it all year, through the nightly air;
When he has struck Ursula, in the fall,
When Persephone first hears Hades’ call,
Then turn the leaves of trees to red with blood,
Which fall from Ursula as a gory flood:
But when in spring the Bear rises again,
Boötes chases him across heaven’s main;
Demeter’s son enjoys his greatest love,
To hunt a starry foe in the dome above.
The Lernaean Hydra or the Second Labor of Heracles
That second labor, most renowned in fame,
Eurystheus proclaimed when Heracles came:
For there was a beast, Typhon’s half-breed son,
That sprang from the swamp, and in the land had done
Whate’er it listed, killing cattle and
Ravaging the fields, the pasture, the whole land;
This Eurystheus told Heracles to slay,
And Heracles went out without delay.
Iolaus accompanied him and drove
The chariot of the fierce son of Jove.
When they reached Lerna, Heracles beheld
The hydra on a hill. His bloodlust swelled,
And his brands he put quickly to the flame,
Then fired at the hydra; from the hill it came.
Though Typhon had a hundred heads, his son
Had only nine: immortal though was one.
When Heracles approached, the serpent twined
Itself about his legs, seeking thus to bind
The demigod, who stood both firm and tall,
Whose club upon each head one by one did fall:
But soon as one was struck, forth sprang two more;
So bit by bit the hero was pressed sore;
Moreover, the foul hydra had a friend,
A crab against which he had to defend;
Whether the crab sought truly to help the snake,
Or whether thought it opportune to take
Advantage of an easy meal, attacked
It the foot of Heracles: but he cracked
The crab with his club, and broke it to bits:
The hydra by this point was giving him fits;
And lest his strength should fail, and he expire,
He called to Iolaus, who set a fire
In a nearby forest, and took in his hands,
Two branches, which he used as fiery brands:
Together then, they two worked to defeat
The hydra; with his club, Heracles would beat
Off one of the heads, then Iolaus would
Burn the root: this destroyed the heads for good.
Now, once the mortal heads had all been slain,
And the hero knowing he couldn’t brain
The immortal head, he rather dug a hole,
And buried it instead; then a stone did roll
Over its grave, and so was put to rest
The fiend by which the land had been possessed.
In the hydra’s blood the hero dipped his darts,
(It was a poison worse than Hecate’s arts)
And coated the points; this dreadful toxin slew
Whoe’er was pierced by the foul serpent’s brew.
But when he returned, Eurystheus swore
That this labor would not be counted, for
He had been helped; the labor had been shared;
And alone the danger had not been bared.
The Nemean Lion or the First Labor of Heracles
The lion of Nemea roamed the plain.
By it how many were devoured and slain?
It fed on men and beasts, and like a king,
When it wished it did on its lessers spring.
The man who, in the field, was caught unawares,
Was slain as surely as foxes caught in snares;
It pounced upon them and tore from their bones
Their flesh: first they howled, then gave sickly moans;
The thirsty ground drank up the blood that poured
From their wounds. The lion triumphant roared.
In agony did men and women weep,
When they beheld their kinfolk slain like sheep;
And so, with great desire they sorely sought
A hero, by whom the beast could be caught,
And not only caught, but wholly destroyed,
That quiet peace again might be enjoyed:
But until Heracles, none could do the deed;
Thus, from the lion Nemea wasn’t freed.
But, Eurystheus sent Heracles to slay
The lion, for his first labour to pay
For the crime that he in madness had committed;
Only by labours could he be acquitted.
And Heracles went out to seek his prey;
He found it, and he shot it where it lay;
The arrow from his bow could not pierce its hide,
By its golden fur ‘twas lightly pushed aside.
He waited then and watched it from afar,
Seeking a better chance with the beast to spar;
At last, the lion to its den returned:
The entrance to its cave, Heracles discerned.
The mount on which it sat, he circled first,
Careful, lest the lion, sensing him should burst
From out the cave, and seize him unaware:
He treaded lightly, and took the utmost care.
Another entrance to the den he found;
A giant boulder he pushed along the ground;
With this he covered the mouth of the cave,
Then went to make the den the lion’s grave.
The second entrance led him to his foe,
Into the lair he crept, cautiously and slow;
The beast was fast asleep, it did not sense
Heracles’ approach. The hero in suspense
Approached within a span, and raised his arm;
He made not a sound, he gave no alarm;
He raised his club, and with one brutal blow,
He battered the brains of the beast below:
The lion – dazed – could not tear Heracles,
Who in his godlike arms the beast did seize.
He strained: the labour took all of his might,
But he embraced the deed, for he loved a fight.
Though suffering o’ershadowed all his life,
He never shrank in fear from pain or strife.
The beast, it strained to break free from his grip,
And sought by heaving to make the hero trip:
But Heracles held fast his roaring prey;
By suffocation he took its life away.
When finally, the beast slumped down in death,
Then Heracles at last could catch his breath;
And then, as proof to all of what he smote,
He took the lion’s skin to be his coat.
When Eurystheus saw what he had done,
He quaked with fear and was almost undone.
That the labour was fulfilled, he agreed,
Then sent Heracles on his way with speed;
And after this, Eurystheus had made
A jar of bronze, which in the earth was laid:
From that day forth, when Heracles would come,
To command the labour, he’d send other some,
While he himself would hide, in abject fear,
And to Heracles wouldn’t dare come near.
Songs of the Gods 