n's son many cares kept her
wakeful, and she dreaded the mighty strength of the bulls, beneath whose
fury he was like to perish by an unseemly fate in the field of Ares. And
fast did her heart throb within her breast, as a sunbeam quivers upon
the walls of a house when flung up from water, which is just poured
forth in a caldron or a pail may be; and hither and thither on the swift
eddy does it dart and dance along; even so the maiden's heart quivered
in her breast. And the tear of pity flowed from her eyes, and ever
within anguish tortured her, a smouldering fire through her frame, and
about her fine nerves and deep down beneath the nape of the neck where
the pain enters keenest, whenever the unwearied Loves direct against the
heart their shafts of agony. And she thought now that she would give him
the charms to cast a spell on the bulls, now that she would not, and
that she herself would perish; and again that she would not perish and
would not give the charms, but just as she was would endure her fate in
silence. Then sitting down she wavered in mind and said:

"Poor wretch, must I toss hither and thither in woe? On every side my
heart is in despair; nor is there any help for my pain; but it burneth
ever thus. Would that I had been slain by the swift shafts of Artemis
before I had set eyes on him, before Chalciope's sons reached the
Achaean land. Some god or some Fury brought them hither for our grief, a
cause of many tears. Let him perish in the contest if it be his lot to
die in the field. For how could I prepare the charms without my parents'
knowledge? What story can I tell them? What trick, what cunning device
for aid can I find? If I see him alone, apart from his comrades, shall I
greet him? Ill-starred that I am! I cannot hope that I should rest from
my sorrows even though he perished; then will evil come to me when he is
bereft of life. Perish all shame, perish all glory; may he, saved by my
effort, go scatheless wherever his heart desires. But as for me, on the
day when he bides the contest in triumph, may I die either straining my
neck in the noose from the roof-tree or tasting drugs destructive of
life. But even so, when I am dead, they will fling out taunts against
me; and every city far away will ring with my doom, and the Colchian
women, tossing my name on their lips hither and thither, will revile me
with unseemly mocking--the maid who cared so much for a stranger that
she died, the maid who disgraced h