the seats, tables were loaded on high with
food of various kinds.

In the meantime with shaking bodies and infirm gesture the Parcae began to
intone their veridical chant. Their trembling frames were enwrapped around
with white garments, encircled with a purple border at their heels, snowy
fillets bound each aged brow, and their hands pursued their never-ending
toil, as of custom. The left hand bore the distaff enwrapped in soft wool,
the right hand lightly withdrawing the threads with upturned fingers did
shape them, then twisting them with the prone thumb it turned the balanced
spindle with well-polished whirl. And then with a pluck of their tooth the
work was always made even, and the bitten wool-shreds adhered to their
dried lips, which shreds at first had stood out from the fine thread. And
in front of their feet wicker baskets of osier twigs took charge of the
soft white woolly fleece. These, with clear-sounding voice, as they combed
out the wool, outpoured fates of such kind in sacred song, in song which
none age yet to come could tax with untruth.

"O with great virtues thine exceeding honour augmenting, stay of
Emathia-land, most famous in thine issue, receive what the sisters make
known to thee on this gladsome day, a weird veridical! But ye whom the
fates do follow:--Haste ye, a-weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"Now Hesperus shall come unto thee bearing what is longed for by
bridegrooms, with that fortunate star shall thy bride come, who ensteeps
thy soul with the sway of softening love, and prepares with thee to conjoin
in languorous slumber, making her smooth arms thy pillow round 'neath thy
sinewy neck. Haste ye, a-weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"No house ever yet enclosed such loves, no love bound lovers with such
pact, as abideth with Thetis, as is the concord of Peleus. Haste ye,
a-weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"To ye shall Achilles be born, a stranger to fear, to his foemen not by his
back, but by his broad breast known, who, oft-times the victor in the
uncertain struggle of the foot-race, shall outrun the fire-fleet footsteps
of the speedy doe. Haste ye, a-weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"None in war with him may compare as a hero, when the Phrygian streams
shall trickle with Trojan blood, and when besieging the walls of Troy with
a long-drawn-out warfare perjured Pelops' third heir shall lay that city
waste. Haste ye, a-weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spin