Artemis Prologizes by Robert Browning — Read

I am a goddess of the ambrosial courts, / And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassed / By none whose temples whiten this the world. / Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along; / I shed in hell o'er my pale people peace; / On earth I, caring for the creatures, guard / Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek, / And every feathered mother's callow brood, / And all that love green haunts and loneliness. / Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns / Of poppies red to blackness, bell and stem, / Upon my image at Athenai here; / And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above, / Was dearest to me. He, my buskined step / To follow through the wild-wood leafy ways, / And chase the panting stag, or swift with darts / Stop the swift ounce, or lay the leopard low, / Neglected homage to another god: / Whence Aphrodite, by no midnight smoke / Of tapers lulled, in jealousy dispatched / A noisome lust that, as the gadbee stings, / Possessed his stepdame Phaidra for himself / The son of Theseus her great absent spouse. / Hippolutos exclaiming in his rage / Against the fury of the Queen, she judged / Life insupportable; and, pricked at heart / An Amazonian stranger's race should dare / To scorn her, perished by the murderous cord: / Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scroll / The fame of him her swerving made not swerve. / And Theseus read, returning, and believed, / And exiled, in the blindness of his wrath, / The man without a crime who, last as first, / Loyal, divulged not to his sire the truth. / Now Theseus from Poseidon had obtained / That of his wishes should be granted three, / And one he imprecated straight -- "Alive / May ne'er Hippolutos reach other lands! " / Poseidon heard, ai ai! And scarce the prince / Had stepped into the fixed boots of the car / That give the feet a stay against the strength / Of the Henetian horses, and around / His body flung the rein, and urged their speed / Along the rocks and shingles of the shore, / When from the gaping wave a monster flung / His obscene body in the coursers' path. / These, mad with terror, as the sea-bull sprawled / Wallowing about their feet, lost care of him / That reared them; and the master-chariot-pole / Snapping beneath their plunges like a reed, / Hippolutos, whose feet were trammelled fast, / Was yet dragged forward by the circling rein / Which either hand directed; nor they quenched / The frenzy of their flight before each trace, / Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woeful car, / Each boulder-stone, sharp stub and spiny shell, / Huge fish-bone wrecked and wreathed amid the sands / On that detested beach, was bright with blood / And morsels of his flesh: then fell the steeds / Head-foremost, crashing in their moonèd fronts, / Shivering with sweat, each white eye horror-fixed. / His people, who had witnessed all afar, / Bore back the ruins of Hippolutos. / But when his sire, too swoln with pride, rejoiced / (Indomitable as a man foredoomed) / That vast Poseidon had fulfilled his prayer, / I, in a flood of glory visible, / Stood o'er my dying votary and, deed / By deed, revealed, as all took place, the truth. / Then Theseus lay the woefullest of men, / And worthily; but ere the death-veils hid / His face, the murdered prince full pardon breathed / To his rash sire. Whereat Athenai wails.

So I, who ne'er forsake my votaries, / Lest in the cross-way none the honey-cake / Should tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life; / Lest at my fane the priests disconsolate / Should dress my image with some faded poor / Few crowns, made favors of, nor dare object / Such slackness to my worshippers who turn / Elsewhere the trusting heart and loaded hand, / As they had climbed Olumpos to report / Of Artemis and nowhere found her throne -- / I interposed: and, this eventful night, -- / (While round the funeral pyre the populace / Stood with fierce light on their black robes which bound / Each sobbing head, while yet their hair they clipped / O'er the dead body of their withered prince, / And, in his palace, Theseus prostrated / On the cold hearth, his brow cold as the slab / 'Twas bruised on, groaned away the heavy grief -- / As the pyre fell, and down the cross logs crashed / Sending a crowd of sparkles through the night, / And the gay fire, elate with mastery, / Towered like a serpent o'er the clotted jars / Of wine, dissolving oils and frankincense, / And splendid gums like gold,) -- my potency / Conveyed the perished man to my retreat / In the thrice-venerable forest here. / And this white-bearded sage who squeezes now / The berried plant, is Phoibos' son of fame, / Asclepios, whom my radiant brother taught / The doctrine of each herb and flower and root, / To know their secret'st virtue and express / The saving soul of all: who so has soothed / With lavers the torn brow and murdered cheeks, / Composed the hair and brought its gloss again, / And called the red bloom to the pale skin back, / And laid the strips and jagged ends of flesh / Even once more, and slacked the sinew's knot / Of every tortured limb -- that now he lies / As if mere sleep possessed him underneath / These interwoven oaks and pines. Oh cheer, / Divine presenter of the healing rod, / Thy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye, / Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer! / Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies! / And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs, / Ply, as the sage directs, these buds and leaves / That strew the turf around the twain! While I / Await, in fitting silence, the event.