Book 8
so did Althaea hesitate between
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the conflict of her passions: when her rage
had cooled, her fury was as fast renewed:
but always the unsatisfied desire
of blood, to ease the disembodied shades
of her slain brothers, seemed to overcome
the mother-instinct; and intensity
of conduct proved the utmost test of love.
She took the billet in her arms and stood
before the leaping flames, and said, “Alas,
be this the funeral pyre of my own flesh!”
And as she held in her relentless hand
the destiny of him she loved, and stood
before the flames, in all her wretchedness
she moaned, “You sad Eumenides attend!
Relentless Gods of punishment,—turn, turn
your dreadful vision on these baneful rites!
I am avenging and committing crime!
With death must death be justified and crime
be added unto crime! Let funerals
upon succeeding funerals attend!
“Let these accumulating woes destroy
a wicked race. Shall happy Oeneus bask
in the great fame of his victorious son,
and Thestius mourn without slaughtered ones?
'Tis better they should both lament the deed!
Witness the act of my affection, shades
of my departed brothers! and accept
my funeral offering, given at a cost
beyond my strength to bear. Ah wretched me!
Distracted is my reason! Pity me,
the yearnings of a stricken mother's heart
withholding me from duty! Aye, although
his punishment be just, my hands refuse
the office of such vengeance. What, shall he
alive, victorious, flushed with his success,
inherit the broad realms of Calydon,
and you, my slaughtered brothers, unavenged,
dissolved in ashes, float upon the air,
unpalpitating phantoms? How can I
